


Twin Empires

by Diomedes



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DCEU, DCU, DCU (Comics), Iron Man (Comics), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Superman (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcoholic Tony, Batman doesn't drink, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Lex Luthor had issues, Lex is playing Risk with the actual world, MCU/DCEU Fusion, Post-Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), President Lex, Tony Stark Has Daddy Issues, Tony Stark Has Issues, Villain PoV, which he solved with murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-12 17:21:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12964506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diomedes/pseuds/Diomedes
Summary: Anthony and Alexander were named for conquerors. Woe be unto those who oppose them.The Lex-Luthor-and-Tony-Stark-have-known-each-other-since-childhood story literally nobody asked for. Combines MCU and DCEU canon (with kitchen sink!canon thrown in at will) tracking the relationship between Lex and Tony as they go from almost-friends at private school through the events of BvS.aka let’s make Lex Luthor the President in the MCU———————————Here’s to Princes,here’s to blood money and inheritance and the endless machine,here’s to the children we’ll never have and the lessons we’ll never learn,here’s to Empires - may the republic for which we stand raze us to the ground,…and may the best man win.





	1. Foundation

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in response to the numerous _Tony-Stark-and-Bruce-Wayne-were-childhood-friends_ stories. To be honest I don’t think Bruce would approve of Tony all that much. So I decided to write the opposite: it’s _Lex_ and Tony who have been not-quite-friends-since-childhood. I have no idea how this became a character study of Lex-and-Tony vs all of Tony’s other relationships but it did.  
>  My Lex pulls quite a bit from comic!Lex because that puts him at about MCU Tony’s age and I have no idea what Jesse Eisenberg was doing.
> 
>  **Integrated Timeline:** IM1, IM2, Man of Steel, Avengers, IM3, Cap2, Avengers 2, Suicide Squad, Cap 3, BvS  
>  (Wonder Woman, Justice League and Spiderman: Homecoming are excluded)

_Once upon a time_ is the classic fairytale opening. The tale of the compassionate commoner ascending to royalty and prosperity; rags to riches for the benefit of all.

This isn’t that type of story and they would laugh at you for suggesting it.

——————

_Once upon a time,_ there were two Princes who were almost friends. The dutiful heirs to twin empires built on blood and bones.

But they never quite made it.

Fate kept them apart to suffer under the weight of their crowns and the scorn of their Kings, trapped in tall Towers held under siege by implacable dragons with sharp grins and smooth voices. No knights ever came to the boys’ rescue, no queen ever petitioned their return. Instead they survived as children must, and so bent to the will of Destiny.

But Fathers - not even Kings - live forever, and the Princes awoke years later to silence. To a land without kings or prisons or dragons. There was nothing left to stop them and so nothing did. They lied and killed, waged wars and hoarded gold. They carved their Glorious Age into blood-churned earth and atop the backs of men. Remade their Empires in their own twisted images and blotted their fathers from the history of the world.

Their true selves they hid under the thin veneer of the Princes they had been and were no longer. They had become instead what Destiny had taught them to be: vicious, cruel creatures; slaves to their cunning and appetites. Unfettered vessels of power and legacy and spite. You see, they did not care for kings (who had trapped them) or knights (who had abandoned them), so they grew up to be neither.

They grew up to be dragons.

_The End._

(There is no _happily ever after_ but why should there be? You were warned this wasn’t that type of story.)

(And it’s only a tragedy if you think either of them could have been saved.)

—————

_Once upon a time,_ Lex Luthor is still alien to the single-minded greed that will consume his adult life. What triggers it that first time is nothing more exotic than a book; an eighteenth century english printing of Sun Tzu’s _The Art of War_ which he finds in the unlikeliest of places: the antique library of Stark Mansion.

It's common knowledge at St. Matthew's that every Friday-Saturday-whenever-his-parents-aren't-home there's an open invitation to Howard Stark’s liquor cabinet - Anthony’s not-subtle but relatively successful play for favour amongst the student body. Lex tags along, an uninvited but unbarred guest.

He finds himself unmoved by Anthony’s bribe of alcohol and money, but the _library_ \- he’ll take his chances the library. White ash from the spitting fire dapples the mantle, the popping of sparks the only sounds. Dog-eared paperbacks are strewn about the end tables, a sign they’ve been read and re-read and loved. The room is large without feeling cavernous, warm without being stifling. It is comfortable, lived-in. _Safe._

_The Art of War_ is nestled on a high, untouched shelf and Lex pulls it down with reverent fingers. He curls up in a red armchair and that’s when the still-alien feeling of avarice consumes him. It’s frightening, the magnitude of his envy. A lightning bolt of want takes over Lex’s entire being followed by white-hot rage at the injustice of the world that _this_ (this book, this place, this life) is something Lex Luthor does not have. That it is wasted on the likes of Anthony Edward Stark.

(Years from now Lex will pretend that it was only the book he coveted, not the sanctuary. He does not like to be made to look a fool, even in his memories.)

So unexpected is this feeling that he misses Stark’s entrance. He just looks up abruptly and St. Matthew’s enfant terrible is standing there, dark-eyed and dark-haired, and for all Lex’s careful discretion he realizes he’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. It doesn’t make him feel chastised, it makes him feel vicious. His comforting illusion of home punctured by the arrival of its true master.

_You’re not supposed to be here,_ he thinks, _You don’t belong here, you don’t **deserve** this place. _

Anthony’s expression darkens and Lex realizes too late he’s said that part aloud.

“I _live_ here, Luthor. You’re the one nobody invited.”

Lex grits his teeth but social suicide by Stark is not something he can afford. School is marginally more bearable than home and Lex cannot afford to extend his war to a second front. He very carefully closes the book -

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Stark waves him off, “I don't care about the books. Take 'em out muck 'em about. Burn the ones you don't like in the fireplace,” Stark snorts, gazing at the heart of the fire, “I already did.”

In an instant the fire turns from warm comfort to hostile devourer. “Traditionally burning books isn't a sign of genius.”

Stark’s head jerks up. “Well, I’m not a traditional genius.”

“You bet,” Lex mumbles under his breath. Jury’s out on the _genius_ part of that statement but _non-traditional_ might be Anthony Stark in a nutshell.

“What are you doing here anyway?” Anthony asks, slumping insolently into the armchair across from Lex like he owns the place. Because he does.

“Reading.” Laconic.

Anthony tilts his head to read the spine. “ _The Art of War._ Christ. Tell me, what horribly out-of-date book are you planning on picking up next?“

“History is never out of date.”

“By definition it always is.”

Lex stews silently because arguing with Anthony was like launching missiles at tidal waves. “If that’s how you feel, you don’t understand it.”

“What's there to understand? The person with the better weapons and the most resources always wins.”

“That’s blatantly untrue. Maybe you should try reading books instead of destroying them, you might actually learn something.”

Anthony shrugs. “I did read them first if it makes you feel better. Everything _he_ owned on the Second World War. Spoiler alert,” Stark leans forward to whisper, “it turns out the guys with the bigger, shinier weapons win.”

Lex’s face scrunches with disgust. “So you burned books about people burning books. Well done.”

Stark smiles without humour. “No one's been around to appreciate the irony of that particular act of revenge so I suppose you're good for something.”

Why on earth Stark’s plotting revenge against the written word and WWII is quite beyond Lex but Anthony’s spared his answer by the echoing slam of the front door. Stark's eyes dart towards the hallway. “Yeah, that's what I came in here to warn you about. My father’s home early and everyone else has already scattered,” Anthony rambles as he runs his hands nervously through his hair which only succeeds in making him look more untidy.

“Anthony!” A harsh voice yells from just outside. Lex flinches as the name cuts through the air like a whip. “Anthony!”

Stark freezes and seems to shrink right before Lex’s eyes, shoulders curling inward. He's staring wistfully at the door, breathing too carefully and too deeply. Frozen.

There's a loud clattering smash and both boys jump. Stark Senior has clearly found the empty liquor bottles. "Anthony, get out here. _Now_."

There a promise in his tone and the glassiness in Anthony’s stare slips, replaced with something Lex finds all too familiar. Something scared and trapped and desperate. The haunted look of someone who’s doomed to lose and can’t stop playing. He sees it in his own reflection every morning.

(Lex will never uncover more damning evidence against Howard Stark than this single moment. He'll never need more.)

All of a sudden the library doesn’t feel safe anymore and Lex can’t believe he ever dreamed differently.

Anthony clears his throat. “It’d probably be best if you left,” he whispers. There’s a hasty, fake smile tacked on at the end, as if he could fool Lex or himself or anyone who bothered to look. (The problem is, you have to be looking.)

In a different universe this is when they’d have rescued each other, but they are children still - too far from the men they will become. So in this universe Lex just nods before he watches Anthony stumble out of the room, grace gone and feet leaden. The double doors of the library shut with a deafening click in the silence.

Lex stays in the empty (hollow, unsafe) library as long as he dares. Deliberately doesn’t listen for anything beyond the chime of the old grandfather clock in the corner and the crackling of the fire consuming itself. He counts his breaths as the words blur and swim on the page in front of him. He doesn’t work up the courage to leave until the sun’s gone down and he doesn’t see anyone in the halls on the way out. He takes _The Art of War_ with him - rescues it really, from this terrible place ( _how was he ever fooled_ ) and silently returns to the Luthor compound, careful not to wake his own sleeping dragon.

Monday morning Anthony is laughing on the front steps of St. Matthew’s, devil-may-care grin plastered on, a splint around his right wrist and a story on his liar’s tongue but Lex never again believes. And when Anthony’s foolish enough to host again the next weekend - actually extends an invitation to him this time - Lex just shakes his head and Stark gives a one-shouldered shrug and the world is spared their alliance.

That’s the story of _Almost_.

Tell yourself it’s better this way.

—————

So that's what could have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Instead, Lex goes to Kansas and meets Clark Kent. Tony gets shipped upstate and meets Tiberius Stone.

Destiny calls.

————

The next time they meet, Howard and Maria Stark are dead.

The newspapers claim it’s a simple car accident, a cruel trick of fate. The people who think they know better whisper that it’s a drunkard’s mistake. The people who do know better aren’t talking yet.

The Luthors go to the viewing at St. George’s cathedral in New York with thousands of others. It’s a professional courtesy, which is to say Lionel Luthor attends for the sole purpose of making sure the devil is dead. Howard’s enemies have always outnumbered his friends and they’ve all come crawling out of the woodwork to sniff at the body while murmuring praise. _A good man, a great man_. The speeches come in one distinct flavour: crass and over-compensating, the collective lie that is not speaking ill of the dead. Lex knows better; the undercurrent in the mourners’ sobs isn’t grief but ambition and from what he knows of the elder Stark, Lex cannot fault them that.

The caskets lie open, side by side, and the bodies inside look like waxen statues. You might never believe they were ever alive at all and Lex can’t tear his eyes away from Howard’s too-dignified (too-human) face. The body looks far too thin and frail for the disembodied voice of Lex’s memories. It’s a shock to see him now, to know instead of suspect that the monster is mortal. (To know that freedom is just a sharp turn and an impact away.)

Envy floods the empty spaces beneath Lex’s skin. It’s not an alien feeling anymore.

No one looks at the casket on Howard Stark’s left except for Anthony. Lex hasn’t seen Stark in years but he hasn’t changed much. For once he isn’t pretending to smile. His black suit makes him look too pale and his eyes are rimmed with red. A walking corpse instead of a horizontal one. There’s an older man standing behind him with a heavy hand on his shoulder, a vizier staking his claim on the boy-king’s throne.

Lex can’t bring himself to stay among the congregation for the ceremony. The insincerity is laughable and he hasn’t yet grown fond of the pageantry of hypocrisy. He finds Anthony on the third-tier balcony having apparently slipped his keepers, one foot propped up on the railing and slouching so as to be unseen by the godly. His tie is loose and he’s slotted a bottle of something alcoholic into the little shelf that’s supposed to hold a bible.

Lex thinks it might be peppermint schnapps. It smells like Christmas.

Anthony’s eyes swing towards him without seeing, glistening tear tracks getting caught in the light. He blinks twice in confusion. “Luthor,” he says as he swallows a slug from the bottle. “What happened to your hair?”

Lex shrugs casually and runs a hand over his scalp. 

Tact and Anthony are only passing acquaintances. “You look like a leukemia patient. Like, really awful.”

Lex just leans lightly on the balustrade and stares at the mess that is the younger - now only - Stark and waits for him to realize how ill-advised it is to throw stones from glass houses. Eventually Anthony looks away first and Lex is still human enough to let him. Down below someone is playing the piano; a ridiculous jaunty tune that’s marring the artificial solemnity with something resembling humanity. Anthony is transfixed, Lex is not.

“You’re crying.”

Stark doesn’t deny it. He takes the cigarette perched behind his ear and lights it, exhales smoke like the devil’s own. The tears don’t stop. “They’re dead,” he croaks with a thread of disbelief.

_Yes,_ Lex thinks in wonder, in awe, _they’re dead and you’re free._ “Why do you care?”

Anthony jerks around to look at him, all coiled righteous anger. “Fuck you Luthor,” he spits like Lex was as blind as the rest of them, like Lex didn’t _know_. “That’s my Mom. They’re - they were my _parents_.” Anthony’s eyes are dark and fathomless but there’s nothing insincere in them.

Lex feels his lip curl, feels his own anger rising because freedom is everything he has ever dared hope for stuck under Lionel’s thumb and heavy blows. And Anthony is (was) the same, cringing under the weight of his father’s shadow and expectations. Except now the dreaded dragon is dead and Anthony’s the one falling apart. Like regret is something to be wasted on _him_.

Whatever mild kinship they shared dissolves under the weight of this utter betrayal of principle. _Who mourns the passing of a tyrant?_ Anthony does. Against all odds and logic. Lex had thought, no - he’d hoped - that Anthony would be better than this but it turns out Stark’s just as ruined as the rest of them.

(Perhaps an unfair assessment but remember Lex isn’t done with bruises yet, he hasn’t come to learn that scars are their own burden.)

He watches Stark with his tears and his alcohol and his fucking _ungratefulness_ at being saved while down below the mockery continues. The circus send-off a godless man in God’s great house attended by people who hated him and next to a woman he loved. A charade in four acts for an apathetic audience of hundreds and a single drunk teenager. Lex can’t stand it. “I’m leaving.”

Anthony tips his head back. “Good riddance.”

Lex leaves him there, twists the knife on the way out just because he can. “Merry Christmas, Stark. Looks like your gift came early this year.”

He doesn’t turn around to see if Anthony reacts. He’d have been disappointed if he did. Nothing is as satisfying as it should be.

Maybe the lesson here is that grief hits in unexpected ways. After all, all monsters were men first and a part of us mourns not who they were but who they could have been. Who we could have been. _If only_. We mourn our potential selves and the closing off of a thousand possible futures.

Maybe the only lesson is that a pint of peppermint schnapps fits perfectly in the back of a pew where a bible should be.

(The only thing Lex learns is that dragons can be killed.)

————

Lionel Luthor dies of a supposed heart attack 26 months later. Lex doesn’t cry. No one expects him to. It was an open secret, what Lionel was, and the younger Luthor was an acceptable sacrifice to keep in the elder’s good graces. A pauper’s cremation means nothing is left of Lionel but ash and this is true except for his cunning which has seeped deep into the marrow of Lex’s bones.

Anthony doesn’t come to the funeral. He doesn’t send a card, or condolences, or flowers. Lex would have been insulted if he had. Stark Industries _does_ patent a new pacemaker model, removing what they describe as ‘an engineering flaw that could introduce arrhythmia leading to potentially fatal complications’.

This is how Lex learns that Anthony knows.

(Nothing else ever comes of it, and that’s how Lex knows Anthony approves.)

—————

Anthony becomes Tony and graduates MIT at nineteen with too many degrees and not enough sense. Lex goes to Yale and joins the ranks of the elite. (He chooses a ring with a skull and crossbones over a ring with a skull and tentacles, count your blessings). They move to different coasts and manage separate kingdoms. They know nothing of each other except their secrets and it’s inadvisable to found any sort of relationship on mutually assured destruction.

Life goes on.

But you are not forgiven for thinking the kids are alright. Too many people have thought that over the years. Too many people hoped instead of helped until the clumsy fingerprints of none-too-careful men baked into them like bruises leaving behind a pair of smudged, imperfect replicas. So this is your chance; mourn who they could have been and the infinite possible futures we could have had.

All monsters were men first. All monsters were boys.

—————

Gotham is a terrible place to host the annual _Titans of Industry_ gala. If Lex intends to remake Metropolis in his own image: to forge it into a lighthouse guiding humanity’s progress - then Gotham City exists as its shadow; its former glory fallen to ruin and swallowed in myth. To be King here means nothing and costs everything.

Speaking of which, Gotham’s last and only prince is lounging on one of the cream sofas. Bruce Wayne is old money: old enough the public has decided to applaud his generous philanthropy instead of screaming reparations for how his family accrued their fortune. Lex has already written him off as one of the Lost Boys and nothing in LexCorp’s extensive research of the man suggests _Bruce Thomas Wayne_ warrants a second look.

Nothing until that night.

See, it’s not particularly fair to say Tony Stark and Tiberius Stone _crash_ the gala, they were invited, albeit begrudgingly. It is hardly a cardinal sin in business circles to be shallow and arrogant - but to be shallow and arrogant and _the best at what you do_ can never be forgiven. Young and handsome are just the icing on the cake. Lex can see Hank Pym’s derisive sneer from here.

So Tony waltzes in more-than-fashionably late though without his perpetually-trailing blond shadow. His smile does nothing to hide the split lip and blood on his teeth but it’s open and friendly, too happy to be entirely real.

“Evening, Luthor. Handsome stranger,” Tony greets them. Without another word he steals the glass straight from Wayne’s hand and downs it in a single swallow that betrays just how much Stark’s probably drinking these days. “Christ, this tastes like watered-down gingerale, the bartender stiffed you. We need to remedy this immediately.”

Tony grabs a champagne flute from a passing waiter, empties it and replaces it on the tray before grabbing two more and extending one to the Gothamite. Lex waits for Wayne’s reaction. You can tell a lot about a man by how he deals (or doesn’t) with Hurricane Anthony.

“There are better analgesics than alcohol,” Bruce offers mildly, utterly unruffled as he accepts the glass.

Tony shrugs. “Depends on the pain.” The drink has at least washed most of the blood from his mouth. The rest he wipes with his hand onto his burgundy jacket which manages by chance or design to hide blood well.

Wayne shouldn’t hold out hope he will ever get an explanation or an apology. Stark has always sought refuge in audacity and audacity has been kind to him in a way sincerity hasn’t.

“Bruce Wayne,” the man on the sofa introduces himself, elegantly leaning over to shake Stark’s hand, “Wayne Enterprises.”

“You’re the guy who builds hospitals in Gotham. Well, that business is never going under. This city’s a demilitarized zone.”

Lex watches as the insult does nothing but slide unnaturally off Bruce’s back and he feels the thrum of his dormant curiosity surfacing. “Bruce, this is Anthony Stark.”

“Tony. It’s just Tony.” Stark turns towards him and wraps an arm around his waist pulling them side-by-side. “We’ve been through this, Alexander,” he pouts.

Lex rolls his shoulder back in mild agitation at the name and the touch. A drunk and tactile Stark is hardly a new phenomenon: the kind of brilliance the Luthors have always fostered, the Starks have always drowned, and the aggressively liberal climate of SI’s new base in California hasn’t helped the arrested development of a thirteen-year-old whose parents aren’t home.

“Tony,” Lex acknowledges, mostly to get Stark to back off. “Where's Stone?”

Tony’s smile is back but the bleeding from his gums starts up again, staining it. “No idea. I seem to have lost him for the moment.” Tony doesn’t look too upset about that. That’s odd, as close friends as they are. As close as everyone suspects that they are. (No one dares voice their suspicions aloud, though: not about a military contractor who deals in megadeaths and a media scion with global reach.)

“Someone finally stuck it to the Man and punched you in the mouth, eh?” a voice interrupts. It’s Oliver Queen, having sauntered over after having started and then abandoned a debate about mutant rights with Norman Osborn.

Tony runs a tongue over his teeth, tasting his own blood. “Offering to kiss it better, Ollie? I accept,” he leers brightly before sprawling onto the couch and pulling the blond down beside him. Across the room, a newly-arrived Tiberius Stone stiffens. “What are you doing here with the rest of us profiteering capitalists? I’d have thought you’d still be pretending to slum it with the proles.”

Queen looks outraged (Outraged! I tell you), Wayne looks oddly indulgent and Tony has already made himself at home on what had previously been Gotham’s prince's private sofa. For the rest of the irrelevant conversation Lex keeps one eye on the resident troublemaker and the other on a tightly-wound Stone. The man seems perfectly poised to a casual observer (of which Lex is not) except all six-foot-three of him seems to be in a death grip match with his champagne flute stem. That and his gaze flicks to Stark with infrequent but steady regularity.

Now, Lex is good at people. Not _with_ them necessarily, but _at_ them. There are only a couple things he needs to know here to draw the obvious conclusions. The first is that Stone’s smart enough to know he’s losing the relationship/competition/rivalry he has with Tony but not smart enough to do anything about it. The second is that physical violence is the last refuge of the intellectually outclassed.

(The third is that this isn’t the first time Lex has seen Tony do this song-and-dance. It won’t be the last either.)

He watches Tony swallow down his own blood between fits of laughter, watches him flirt with Queen as if to retroactively justify a bloodied lip, and Lex feels something he hasn’t in a long time: a tug on the sleeve from his dying inner child. A plea on behalf of a boy they left behind in a library who bypassed the crime-punishment connection for this vicious cycle instead. Something flickers in Lex before dying out, _instinct_ or _debt_.

(It's _empathy_ , but Lex is already losing touch. By definition _almost_ is never enough).

Besides, the joke’s on Tiberius if he thinks Tony can’t take whatever he dishes out, if he thinks blood is how you stop a man nicknamed the _Merchant of Death_.

The joke’s on you if you think Tony’s not leaving with him anyway.

It’s nothing but smoke and mirrors. A man walks into a party of his peers with a bruised jaw and bleeding from the mouth. No one gets an answer as to why and at the end of the night no one cares enough to try. _It's Stark, who wouldn't want to hit him? Some bastard just got lucky._ Tony just grins as if he's keeping a secret (true), as if he's winning whatever game he's playing with Stone (false). That audacious misdirection; those charming smiles, the quick-witted patter, the sleight of tongue? That’s all magic is, that’s _art_.

(Tony would say different. He’d say all a magic trick truly requires is the willful blindness of the audience.)

So Lex watches Stone stew with possessive jealousy as Tony practically climbs into Queen’s lap and between the two Lex nearly forgets Wayne is in the picture at all -

That’s the moment when Lex first starts paying attention because on paper Stark and Wayne are fairly similar but sitting side-by-side all Lex can see are the gaps. There’s some artifice to Wayne’s posture even slouched and sloshed as he is, some dignity he can’t quite dispel holding him apart. His eyes are a blue, blank wall masking everything behind them. There’s nothing lost and raw struggling to get out, no desperate need for validation masked as exhibitionism. No drunkenness, no disgust. No curiosity, even. It's a shallow reflection of irresponsible wealth but it seems too smooth to be entirely real next to Stark and the sharp edges buried beneath.

(Bruce’s act is perfect in a way Tony’s never was and never will be.)

Wayne’s not even looking at his companions anymore either, he’s staring at Tiberius Stone, champagne still untouched. Lex would have put that particular connection out of Bruce’s intellectual reach but for a single solitary instant Lex sees something calculating flicker across Bruce’s blandly handsome face. Some hint of a greater challenge lurking within. Lex doesn’t figure out what it is that night. He won’t for years yet.

(Bruce tries to help, in his own way. When Tony gets plastered, he'll steer him clear of Stone and try to put him up at Wayne Manor. It won't work. The night will end with Tony exuberantly designing missiles on napkins after propositioning the (married) 60-year-old hostess. At the end everyone will be _begging_ for Tiberius to take Tony away, and at the end Bruce will let him.)

(Lex will let him too. But you didn't expect anything else from him, did you?)

The alumni of this meeting all go on to bigger, better, awfuller things: Oliver Queen will disappear off a cruise ship eight years from now and no one will care. Tony will be kidnapped seventeen months after that and his heart will never recover. Stone will be the only one of the notorious playboys to keep up the lifestyle and Lex will speculate it’s solely because he never outgrows the love/hate/jealously of falling into Stark’s orbit. Wayne is already lost cause - Gotham has long since broken some part of that man’s soul. In a few years he’ll start collecting kids like sports cars - the black-haired, blue-eyed collection - and he’ll spend his time whittling away his fortune and good name in a degenerate city, King of the Ruins.

(Now, _I_ know better and _you_ know better, but Lex is not wrong, technically speaking).

The dark-haired exchange student trailing General Lane will disappear after getting into a lab accident four weeks from now. He’ll emerge triumphant ten years from now with a gauntleted hand wrapped around a nation’s throat and a grudge Lex won’t understand until an alien lands in Metropolis. Henry Pym will spend the next couple decades learning a man cannot live on spite alone. Daniel Rand will let his corporation stagnate and run off to China. The awkward tech-guy standing in the corner - Lex has already forgotten his name - will eventually get shot in the head by one of the Luthor administration’s former spymasters.

Norman Osborn will go insane and get everything he’s ever wanted.

And Lex - Lex will build his empire, brick by brick, deal by deal, until his fortune and influence eclipses that of everyone in this room.

But not yet. For now they’re young and immortal; the chosen inheritors of the Earth.

“To the future,” Stark declares flippantly, as if any man has a choice.

(This is to who they become: to Iron Man and Iron Fist, to Batman and Antman and the second Blue Beetle, to Green Arrow and the Green Goblin. This is to the President of the United States of America and the Emperor of Latveria. This is your Superhero-Supervillain Class of ’99.)

The clinking of crystal echoes forward forever.

——————

Lex’s toast would have been infinitely more honest:

_Here’s to Princes._  
_Here’s to blood money and inheritance and the endless machine._  
_Here’s to the children we’ll never have and the lessons we’ll never learn._  
_Here’s to Empires - May the Republic for which we stand raze us to the ground._

_And may the best man win._

Lex intends to.


	2. Induction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For instance, Tony nearly dies before Lex can say _I told you so_. That truly would have been unforgivable.

It’s up to you to decide when this fairytale starts going off the rails. It depends in large part on what you think of the Greek idea of Destiny. The idea that fate is inescapable not because freewill does not exist, but because the seeds of destiny are already planted; those flaws and talents inextricable from _you_. Any attempt to be spared is futile; it is _who you are_ that damns you.

Lex has always sided with the Greeks. Tony would not.

If you side with Stark then life was always a choose-your-own-adventure story. A free-for all. Every decision you made could have changed your life, sent you spiraling off in a different direction. It must be incredibly frustrating to believe this and still find yourself repeating the same mistakes, the same errors. To find yourself running out of time to get it _right_.

If you agree with Luthor then it was always too late.

(Riddle me this: if it is _who you are_ that damns you, can you change who you are?)

———————————

Lex learns that Tony Stark has gone missing before anyone at Stark Industries does.

(He learns, years later, from an offhand comment about Obadiah Stane that this is not strictly speaking true.)

LexCorp can’t yet compete on the weapons/equipment side of the military-industrial complex but they’re second only to Haliburton in overseas construction. They also pay much, much better than either Uncle Sam or Dick Cheney so Lex learns of Stark’s abduction at four in the morning on his treadmill.

There is nothing he can do about it. There is nothing he intends to; he owes Tony nothing. Lex supports SI publicly and bides his time. Stark was never shy about the massive contributions he personally made to the company and the markets believe him. No one wants a tech-company with it’s Jobsian messiah gone (well, maybe Ted Kord does - but Ted Kord is an idiot). The stock price for Stark Industries plummets despite them being locked into more military contracts over the next ten years than Justin Hammer has ever seen. Once Stark is declared legally dead and his assets unfrozen it’ll be simple for LexCorp to divide and conquer, carving off the profitable pieces of SI and leaving the rest to die a true capitalist’s death.

The media coverage of the kidnapping is characteristically both unsympathetic and fascinated. Fox has conspiracy theorists claiming it’s the US government itself holding him hostage ( _why would they do that?_ the sane panelist moans). CNN fear-mongers, enumerating every terror group in the world and emphasizing that if Tony Stark isn’t safe, no one is. The BBC is left to dryly point out that the mystery of how no one has tried to kill Tony before now is second only to the mystery of how he hasn’t managed to kill _himself_ before now.

The pinnacle of this zeitgeist is a series of wonderfully mean-spirited comedy sketches about which billionaire heir America wanted back less: Oliver Queen or Tony Stark. Two female comedians play them with sharpied-on facial hair. They’re marooned on a desert island where useful things keep getting washed ashore. Stark takes the outboard motor and the GPS and the aluminum boat and builds… a giant missile launcher. Oliver Queen makes a bow and arrow set and vows to eat only what he has killed while buckets of KFC, a suckling pig and eventually an entire pyramid of Ferraro Roche chocolates floats ashore.

Cue audience laughter.

(You should watch it. It’s a _scream_.)

The real story Luthor hears is this: the DoD is shitting their pants. According to General Lane, _All the higher-ups are having flashbacks, it’s like karmic retribution for Operation Paperclip_. The best case scenario is Stark dies and dies soon.

So Lex waits and waits and waits (though for what he couldn’t tell you).

——————————

While Tony’s personal revelations are being revealed in bombastic circumstances, the closest Lex comes to a moment of reflection is the day he realizes he cannot be in four places at once.

He needs - not a partner - but a right-hand. Not a confidante, but an extension of his will. He narrows his search to two women with predatory eyes and soft smiles. He finds himself at an impasse. Ruthlessness pours off them; both a reason to be wary and a requirement for the job. They are beautiful in their respective ways: dark-haired and slim or voluptuous and redheaded, but Lex has always sided with the Greeks on this as well - that beauty is a warning, not a boon.

What breaks the stalemate is the most trivial of themes. Tony Stark has ( _had_ , now) a driver named Happy. Bruce Wayne has an assistant called Grace. Their unsubtle, vain attempts to fix the absences within themselves. Magpie princes collecting embodiments of qualities forever just out of their reach.

It is on a whim that Lex joins them. He hires Mercy Graves.

(Laugh all you like, Luthor is many things but _merciful_ has never been one of them.)

——————————

Lex learns of Stark’s return at the same damn time as everyone else which means someone is getting _fired_. The man announces he’s shutting down the weapons division of SI effective immediately ( _the penalties will be exorbitant_ ), sits down on the floor, eats a cheeseburger and disappears.

(The next time Stark’s on TV a reporter asks if he escaped captivity by building a giant missile launcher consisting of an outboard motor, a GPS and an aluminum boat. Tony laughs good-naturedly and assures her he’d have come up with something better than a rocket launcher.

Lex twitches and he doesn’t know why.)

He works it out, piece by piece by piece: satellite images and corporate espionage. DoD moles and electronic surveillance until -

_I am Iron Man._

Four words and Lex’s currency is worthless.

————————

Iron Man is the first. Superman is the second. The third through forty-ninth are alien supersoldiers bent on terraforming the earth. (Batman, if you asked, is a myth, or a mental patient, or the Dread Pirate Roberts - Lex’s working on it.)

He calls Tony for the first time since Afghanistan to eat in the rubble of the city Lex has adopted, the one that already belongs to him in all the ways that matter. (After Mayor Luthor guides Metropolis through the aftermath, he’ll have the senate seat by a landslide.) The streets are still not cleared but Lex can prioritize so his favourite Italian restaurant has smashed windows, broken gas pipes and a single table set up on the patio.

Tony is late. Lex expects nothing more.

The streak of red descending from the sky causes a mild panic as construction workers take shelter, collective trauma running too close to the surface. The armour lands and disassembles with perfect clockwork precision. It is - Lex is sure - a marvel of modern technology, but weapons have never mattered as much as their masters so he ignores the pageantry for a careful study of the man who built it.

Stark doesn’t look good. Lex wonders how many have noticed and how many are still too busy studying the suit.

“Did you make reservations?” Tony asks, eyeing the lone table.

Lex makes a show of pouring himself another glass of wine to emphasize Stark’s tardiness. “They were for an hour ago, so clearly not.”

Tony snorts and slides into the chair across from Lex. He doesn’t look debauched or drunk but he doesn’t look good and for a man like Stark that means something. He digs into the waiting pasta carbonara like he’s a starving beggar instead of - by most metrics - the second wealthiest man in the country.

Second, of course, to Lex.

“You’re already rebuilding,” Tony observes, surveying the catastrophic rubble.

“No attack, be it terrorist, nuclear or extraterrestrial, will ever keep Metropolis down for long. It’s time I showed the world that. LexCorp needs a new headquarters and this city needs a new Plaza One, that’s the cornerstone where the Shard will stand.” Lex can already see his city remade by his own hand, for his own purpose. “This city will rise again, those who stand against it be damned.”

Tony looks unimpressed. “Nice speech, I think you hit all the patriotic highlights. Are you running for President? You did pronounce ‘nuclear’ correctly though so you may be over-qualified.”

Lex scowls. “LexCorp is resurrecting a city. As I recall, your talents have always laid in the opposite direction. Your family made a fortune off destruction,” he leans in on his elbows to catch Tony’s gaze. “Don’t worry about my legacy Anthony, worry about your own.”

This isn’t how this meeting was supposed to go. Lex was counting on flattery to do most of the work with Stark’s curiosity doing the rest but there are reasons Lex generally avoids doing business with Tony. The man is too unpredictable in his triumphs and too predictable in his vices for Lex’s taste.

(That shouldn’t stop Luthor. He’s a master manipulator but he leaves Tony alone for the most part. Take from that what you will.)

When Tony speaks again he surprises Lex by actually saying something. “I don’t know what I want to leave behind. The Expo pre-dates me. So does SI. Putting arc reactor technology on the open market would instantly make me the next Oppenheimer.” Tony shrugs. “So that leaves a couple sex tapes, some shitty lab assistants and a very expensive wine cellar.”

They were never close enough to warrant each other’s confidences. Lex wonders what’s changed that _legacy_ is something Stark will talk freely about. To anyone, even if _anyone_ is Lex.

“And Iron Man,” Tony finishes. He’s playing with his food now.

Lex rolls his eyes. Iron Man is nothing but a performance piece - and Stark is an effortless, charming performer - but at its core that armour is just another layer of bullshit Tony can use as a shield. Lex has seen him do this song and dance before in private school uniforms and blood red tuxes but it’s always Tony underneath and he always bleeds out.

The dismissive gesture doesn’t go unnoticed. Tony’s stare leaves Lex’s face to focus out on the horizon that can only be seen for the lack of skyscrapers still standing. “Are you about say it’s too late for me to change, or that you don’t believe I did?” The offhand flippancy in the question covers its fragility nicely. It betrays just how many people have already second-guessed Stark’s rebirth.

“The latter,” Luthor replies. Tony may be convinced he learned _better_ in that desert, but Lex knows different. “Right after you dropped SI’s military contracts you went and built the most advanced weapons system in the world, painted it obnoxious colours, and started policing the globe yourself. Surely you can find the irony in that.”

Tony stares down at his plate with disgust. “ _Damned if I do, damned if I don’t,_ ” he murmurs before he visibly pulls himself together. “You didn’t invite me to lunch because you remembered it’s my birthday next week, why am I here?”

Lex puts a heavy suitcase on the table in front of Stark and opens it, revealing green-studded rocks of varying sizes. Tony has the decency to look intrigued.

“It’s a mineral LexCorp’s found at the site of the crashes. It has a number of interesting radioactive and chemical properties, none of which are harmful to humans. So far no medical or technological uses. Some targeted military ones.”

That last bit doesn’t pass Stark by as he carefully weighs one of the smaller stones in his hand. “LexCorp want to weaponize it. Why? If you want to hurl ballistics there are a number of earthly materials that work just fine and cost much less. DoD’s not going to go for _space rock bullets_ just because they sound cool.”

Lex doesn’t bother keeping the contempt from his voice. “It’s not harmful to _humans_. It _is_ harmful to the beings who razed Metropolis and LexCorp headquarters, who killed all those - “

“ - I saved as many as I could, Luthor. I swear to you. I tried - “ Tony’s eyes widen, stricken with an expression Lex can’t place.

(Guilt. That one’s guilt. Already a stranger to Lex, already Tony’s favourite.)

“ - What’s done is done.” He pins Stark with a cold stare. “What matters now is I will stop at nothing to protect my city. That includes preparing for when _They_ come again _and_ for the one already here. I’m not asking for your opinion, I’m asking the only other futurist I know: how will we fight back?”

Tony exhales and rubs the bridge of his nose. “You once told me _bigger, shinier weapons_ didn’t mean you won the war.” Lex has to hide his surprise because Stark has always tried his damnedest to forget they’d ever met as children. “We both know if LexCorp builds those weapons they’re more likely to fuel paranoia than be used in a second alien attack.” Stark shakes his head like it’s an unlikely possibility. “And as far as anyone can tell- and by anyone I mean the Daily Planet - your municipal superdude's a nice guy.”

Cold hate lances through Lex at the Alien’s mention. “That’s what they think. Tell me, have you read what they think of you?”

Fun fact, _Tony Stark: Merchant of Death_ originated in a Perry White byline. He has subsequently been promoted to Editor-in-Chief of the _Daily Planet_. The paper’s sentiment has been pretty consistent since.

Tony smiles bitterly. “Ah. So I’m here because I’m not the _Nice Guy_. You don’t want LexCorp to weaponize this,” he walks the smallest splinter of kryptonite across his fingers, “you want _me_ to do it.”

“ _Clearly._ ”

“I promised people I’d stopped.”

Lex is done pretending to be kind. “I’d also heard you’d stopped drinking,” he says caustically as Tony’s hand darts back from his already-empty glass of red wine. “Maybe it’s time you stopped making promises and started doing what you do best. The world might not have time for you to finish this charade,” he gestures to the suit, “before it needs its _Merchant of Death_ back.”

Stark purses his lips like he wants to argue, like there’s even a decent argument to make. The world might love Iron Man and hate Tony Stark but there is a difference between _like_ and _need_. The world needs men like them - they were born to it, it’s in their bones: iron and ice water. For Tony Stark to claim Iron Man as his legacy is as ludicrous as a wild tiger claiming its best work is done in the circus.

Luthor shoves the case towards Tony, all his tact and careful flattery forgotten. “I’m right Stark, and you know it.”

It’s Tony’s turn to roll his eyes. “Give it to someone else. I might not have time,” he says, absently rubbing the rash at his neck as he pulls his sunglasses on.

“Prioritize better,” Lex snaps. Being a so-called superhero cannot be that taxing.

Stark’s smiles and it’s all teeth. “You know what, that’s not a bad idea.” He gets up in the middle of his meal and walks away. “It’s been interesting, Luthor. Send me the check.” The armour assembles around him and seconds later he’s gone.

Lex would be upset but several of the kryptonite stones are missing; victims of Stark’s curiosity if not a solid promise to help. So Lex will let Anthony have his fun; he’ll watch as Stark plays superhero, racecar driver, and technological bad-boy genius. As he blows up his own house and his own Expo within a week of each other. As Tony slowly corrupts Iron Man from the inside out, because men like them do not change.

——————

Aliens - _different_ aliens - descend on New York and the World Security Council doesn’t screw around this time. They remember Metropolis. They order a nuclear assault on the island almost immediately. It’ll be a massacre and a calculated one at that; a tragedy on the order of millions, but there are degrees of tragedy.

For instance, Tony nearly dies before Lex can say _I told you so_. That truly would have been unforgivable.

——————

Lex hosts the first Avengers Gala in Metropolis because he can and because Tony is too busy dreaming of falling to stop him. It’s held in the Shard and the creme-de-la-creme of the Northeast’s elite have come out to reaffirm their superiority over the saviours of New York. None of the Avengers except for Stark and the woman look like they want to be here. All the guests can tell from a mile away and resent them right back. It’s as good an environment as any for Lex to evaluate the new players alongside the old ones.

The Black Widow has bucked her name to wear a champagne silk dress, effortlessly sliding into the role of high-society debutante. She’s doing well, the ring of politicians circling her haven’t turned on her yet. Neither have their wives which is a much more difficult feat for a woman so beautiful.

“Having a good evening, Ms. Rushman?” Lex asks, careful to keep any latent accusation out of his voice. They almost worked together after all, even if Lex did choose Mercy in the end.

She lets the name slide. “It’s as wonderful as I expected, Senator Lennox,” she replies, getting his name equally wrong and with a smile so transparently fake she must be doing it on purpose.

Lex just inclines his head in acknowledgement and moves on. He has enough grace left to acknowledge he has been spared that particular bullet.

Apart from Stark the rest of the Avengers look like cornered animals. Dr. Banner is nervously loitering in the corner, making himself as close to invisible as he can. LexCorp has developed a few new weapons on the off chance the man forgets himself but they remain packed in their cases downstairs. Mercy objects but Luthor doesn’t budge. He has only ever had a problem with gods, never monsters. He watches Banner’s humanity with all its awkward quirks while the man’s true self lurks just inches underneath, threatening to destroy them all, and Lex feels an affinity he hasn’t in a long time. Not since Tony was still Anthony.

(Bruce and the Other Guy may share an existence, but Lex is just Lex and Tony is just Tony. They don’t turn large and green when they become monstrous. You don’t get that kind of warning.)

The slim, blond human Avenger has been staked next to the free shrimp all night. He has also managed to prevent anyone not an Avenger from eating any. It’s so incredibly petty that Lex is borderline amused. There are two reporters from the _Daily Planet_ milling around - a redhead lugging around a bodyguard - and they’ve truly distinguished themselves by being the only pair even less popular with the elites than the shrimp-man.

(The large one does manage to snag some shrimp though. The man is _big_ and without violence there’s no way the Hawk can stop him.)

The gala was scheduled on a night such that His Majesty Prince Thor of Asgard was regrettably unable to attend. Metropolis has enough over-powered aliens as is, Lex is hardly in the market to add more.

(Wayne was likewise unable to attend though his _with regrets_ mentions nothing about dressing up like a flying rodent and fighting a clown in a purple tuxedo. Oh, Lex knows all about _that_ but even he has no idea where to even start unpacking that particular time bomb.)

That leaves the last and most revered member of SHIELD’s new collection of Power Rangers: Captain America. The man in question is currently missing from the floor and Lex finds him in the last place he’d expect a displaced 40s soldier: the Shard’s small and only library.

“ _The Art of War_ ,” Lex interrupts and Rogers leaps back from where he was reaching out towards the book.

“Uh… yes,” Rogers nearly stammers, clasping his hands behind his back. Caught. “I apologize for the intrusion, Senator, I just needed to get away from…” He doesn’t finish the sentence but Lex knows exactly what it means to seek refuge away from the cacophony of your peers.

What do you know, miracles do happen: Lex Luthor and Captain America have a shared experience. “A word of advice, Captain: never apologize in advance of an accusation. It can only ever be used against you.”

Rogers nods politely with an expression so blank it clearly means Lex’s advice will be ignored.

Lex hates being ignored. “For instance, I never apologized for stealing that book.”

Rogers’ expression goes from gently startled to righteous stone in an instant and Lex is nearly impressed by the smoothness in transition from bookworm to soldier.

Lex smiles his carefully curated smile. “Oh come now, Captain, as the old adage goes _money can’t buy everything_. It was your teammate’s, originally. Or rather I’d guess it was his father’s. The circumstances surrounding its abduction are hardly a secret, ask Anthony about it sometime.”

Tony has probably already forgotten that particular instance. The things we do to spare ourselves.

Rogers must not know any of this because he’s looking at the book with renewed fondness. “You knew the Starks growing up? Howard and Tony?” His voice holds barely concealed eagerness and SHIELD or whoever’s in charge must have kept their prized artefact quite isolated if he’s this desperate for links to the good ol’ days.

Lex shrugs elegantly. “I never met his father but I knew Anthony. We were hardly close, though given some of the people Tony has mistakenly counted among his friends I wouldn’t hold it against me.”

Rogers nods though his expression has a far away look. “I knew him - uh, Howard, I mean. Back in the war.“ There’s a pinched, earnest look on Rogers’s face when he mentions Howard and Lex wonders if the America’s bravest soldier is brave enough to say any of this to Tony. “He kept looking for me once I… It was a private extension of the Stark Expedition that found me. I owe him a lot.” The Captain’s fingers lightly graze the bound leather of the spine like it’s a portal to the past and he dare not tempt himself.

The surge of indignation that rises in Lex is as wholly unfamiliar as it is all-consuming. It’s on the tip of his tongue to tell Rogers what Howard’s devotion to _Captain America_ cost. He wants to tell him about bruises and lies and alcohol, and the parade of bad decisions Tony calls his life that’s barely redeemed by his brilliance. He wants to ask the good captain if he thinks he’s worth the destruction of everything Anthony could have become.

Lex suspects that he isn’t.

(Howard gave up his son for a museum piece. Lionel lost his when he found God. Lex might have it easier here, after all he’s never going to meet God in person.)

“You have no idea,” Lex says, voice dangerously soft as he fights the urge to tear down whatever illusions Rogers is entertaining about who Howard became.

Rogers must hear the condemnation in his tone anyway because his eyes narrow and his stance widens, subtly anticipating a fight. “Howard Stark helped make me what I am.”

Lex finds his next words tumbling out without permission. “Ah, yes. The blond-haired, blue-eyed, All-American _ubermench_. Project Rebirth. The secret plan to combat the Nazis with their own Overman wrapped in their enemy’s colours: red, white and blue.” He whistles. “Someone had a sense of pageantry.”

Rogers’s expression darkens. “The flag means more than that.”

Lex cocks his head. He’s been feeling uncharitable since Rogers’s defence of Howard began. “My flag _is_ your flag, Captain. I know what it stands for and who it serves.”

(And isn’t that a terrifying truth, that America the beautiful is also America the savage, America the cruel.)

“Pretty sure you’ve got that metaphor the wrong way ‘round,” Rogers says wryly, as only a serviceman could.

“No,” Lex replies without shame, the implications settling around them. “I’d never pledge myself to a national ideal. The safest hands are always our own, no?”

Rogers nods and his eyes narrow, having re-categorized Lex correctly as the enemy. “If it protects us from political interference and enables us to help more people, of course.” He grits his teeth and lies, “Present company excepted.”

Lex pretends he doesn’t hear the slight. “Of course.” He isn’t cowed, politicians have killed more soldiers than vice versa.

He takes _The Art of War_ from its place and holds it out. “You should read it. It deals more with strategies than tactics but it’s well worth your perusal. Consider it a loan. Or if you like, a loan of a loan.”

Rogers shakes his head and straightens his posture, stubborn. “It’s not yours to lend, is it? It still belongs to Tony.” He strides right past Lex and his offer towards the door. “I’m sure the Avengers will be seeing you around, Senator.”

Lex smiles to an empty room. _The Art of War_ returns to its shelf. Lex has kept it by his side for three decades and has never given a single thought as to why. He has never been given to self-reflection. It is not a trait common to creatures of his nature.

(It’s nothing more or less than a trace of ash; a reminder of who Alexander could have been before everything innocent and empathetic was burned away.)

Up on the balcony Lex can see Rogers cornering Stark with gritted teeth.

“…why would I give a shit about a stolen book, Steve?” Tony’s whisper is snappish but calm.

Lex catches nothing of the captain’s response except _Howard_ and every muscle in Tony’s body locks at once and his murderous glare swings from Rogers down to Lex from over the ornate railing.

Lex just raises his glass in a solemn toast. A lingering echo of the past we carry with us.

As if any man had a choice.

—————

_The Art of War_ claims the ultimate stratagem is subduing your enemy without a shot.

Both Lex and Tony would agree. Money and charm have served them well.

(So have extensive private arsenals and an inclination to use them.)

—————

As an aside, it’s entirely Frank Castle’s fault that Lex figures out who Batman is.

Luthor’s in New York City to make a real-estate deal with Wilson Fisk when Mercy expresses concerns about security, among them an acrobat dressed like a devil, a Brit with a penchant for purple suits and mindrape, and an ex-Special Forces officer with a habit of skipping all steps in due process. (Lex makes a noise of derision, because _really?_ New York’s becoming more and more Gotham-like with each passing year.)

So of course Lex ends up on the business end of a gun held by the Punisher despite the fact it makes no logical sense. He has done nothing to Castle. He didn’t kill the man’s family; the Luthors have always belonged to a higher class of criminal. Right before he’s rescued by Mercy he realizes that none of that matters, that who Lex _is_ is less important than what Castle’s _become_.

It forces Lex to re-evaluate; see he understands revenge, what he is inexperienced in is grief. He has never felt its sucker punch to the gut, never felt its hooks sink themselves into his heart. He’s never had to fight that emptiness before it corrupts him into something else. (It turned Anthony Stark into a pitiable wreck, how was Lex to know it could turn a man into a myth?)

Lex has no firsthand knowledge of grief or good parents but he remembers being eight and he remembers that hard lessons learned then run deep and true. He has the scars to prove it.

Batman isn’t hard to find after that.

So, yeah. Thanks, Frank.

\------------------------------

Mercy interrupts him, which is rare. “A secret cabal just tried to take over the world.”

Lex’s pen doesn’t stop moving. “Inform whoever it was that if I am not invited next time they will not like my response.”

In a rare lapse Mercy doesn’t take his hint and leave. “A faction of HYDRA infiltrated SHIELD and used them to target over a million individuals for assassination. Three Helicarriers and the Triskellion just went down in D.C. We’re secure, all foreign satellite activity is bounced from LexCorp offices.”

Ah. That is considerably less subtle than China pulling debt chips or Russian hackers or an OPEC embargo but Lex can hardly expect more from an organization modelled after SPECTRE can he. Still, Lex has known about HYDRA for years. They’re in everything, of course he’s found them. In terms of factions that have infiltrated national institutions he’d have ranked their competence somewhere below the war hawks, corporate lackeys, white nationalists, and Mormons.

“I can only hope the Director survived so I can witness him being taken out back behind the Capitol and shot.” Hiding HYDRA spies in SHIELD is akin hiding needles in a giant pile of needles, but if there is an unforgivable sin in espionage a third of your workforce turning out to be enemy spies is probably it. “I’ll raise your bonus if you can get me on the council that indicts him.”

Mercy gives a quick shadow of a smirk. “Yes, sir.”

Contrary to FOX News hysteria, there are worse things than HYDRA. Lex can name seventeen current world leaders who have worse intentions, four of whom have access to high-grade chemical weapons. The amount of data Google pulls from your home computer puts HYDRA to shame and has better algorithms. Seventy years of manipulating wars behind the scenes isn’t bad but it’s pales in comparison to the track record of the same by the honest government of the US-of-A. Think Iran-Contra, think Persian Gulf. Think Vietnam, Afghanistan, Korea, the Balkans, Iraq, Cuba, Afghanistan part II, Israel + the Arab Middle-East in every permutation… There’s a _reason_ Lex chose public service, he always backs the right horse. When someone tells him HYDRA is the greatest extant threat to world security Lex just smiles because they clearly don’t know who they’re talking to.

(It’s HYDRA that first realizes the threat Lex poses. They never get credit for that but they should. Project Insight was not without merit but to suggest that is political suicide, so Lex slips through unharmed.)

See, what HYDRA actually has is a branding problem. The old HYDRA had links to the Third Reich and the re-invention has never been able to shake that taint unlike, say, Adidas or Mercedes or the Apollo space program. Say Nazis and people panic in a way they don’t when you warn them about climate change, or corporate lobbying, or disintegrating schools. It doesn’t really matter what HYDRA’s goals were in the face of that pantomime recoil. It really doesn’t matter how many of them align with Lex’s.

What HYDRA tried to accomplish with a skull and tentacles, Lex will accomplish with stars and stripes. All Project Insight will do is make things easier. Every shake makes people more afraid, ushers them closer to the edge of his grasp.

Mercy is still waiting.

“Is that all?” he asks.

“Your name was found on the list of people targeted by HYDRA.”

Of course it was. He’d have been insulted if it hadn’t. He takes the list from her, scans the other names (Merkel, Stark, Gates…) before he highlights a few and hands the list back to Mercy. He is always ready to take advantage of someone else’s research.

“For elimination?” she asks without missing a beat.

Lex looks out from the Shard over the skyline of his city, his state, at all the worlds still left to conquer. “No. I’m thinking bigger. It’s time we started recruiting.”

They start with the first highlighted name: General Thaddeus A. Ross.

————

Lex stands in front of a cryochamber with a Kryptonian abomination inside. Ross stands to his left, one of the few men on the planet who has experience in monsters of this caliber and who remains unafraid of them. He stands face to face with the ugliness inside the glass, studying it.

(Don’t be fooled, most of the monsters you will meet in your life won’t look anything like this crumpled troll. Most will wear human skins and speak human tongues. If the troll opened his eyes right now he would see two such examples staring back at him.)

“I’ll do it,” Ross says and Lex can tell he’s eyeing him differently, re-evaluating the man he had Lex cast as.

That’s the first piece.

The second piece is the keynote address at Metropolis University on the anniversary of the alien invasion. Luthor talks and mourns like a native son. He is one of the guests of honour at a similar ceremony in New York five months later. He interrupts his stump speech in New Hampshire to give his condolences to the people of London. The next one is for the lives lost in Coast City. His speechwriter has a template now. _Blah, blah, blah, we stand with insert-cityname-here_. This blank will eventually get filled with Johannesburg. Then Sokovia. Then Midway City, Lagos, Bucharest, Leipzig, Gotham, back full-circle to Metropolis.

In August Lex offers Stark _Secretary of Defence_. His advisors tell him it’s an insane idea - _Iron Man_ remains consistently beloved but _Tony Stark_ has never had his alter-ego’s numbers. That’s all beside the point, really. Lex knows Tony will say no, but the offer is poison in and of itself.

Tony just sends him back a sketch of Superman sitting in the West Wing with _Director of Home ~~land~~ planet Security_ on his nameplate. The accompanying note says, in short, that Tony would rather be blown up by his own missile again than join any administration but _you should keep the drawing, it’s a genuine Captain America original_.

(The drawing doesn’t make it through the night. Lex burns it.)

—————————

By September he’s far enough ahead in the polls he takes the day off to go golfing with the outgoing President. Stark joins them. (The last spot in their foursome remains empty; the missing man formation of rich white men everywhere.) Golf is a game of consistency and precision but Ellis is distracted and Tony’s never had the patience to learn. Lex beats them both handily by letting them beat themselves.

You can think of it as a metaphor if you’d like.


	3. Ascension

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony is the weaponized creation of a flawed genius. It is only fitting he’d beget the same.

Modern fairytales are little more than morality plays for an audience of children. They are entirely hypothetical exercises without practical application: a sickly sweet artificial substitute for the chaotic mess that is life and time and history.  
  
(You can try to cobble one together but reality sticks to your fingers; bad guys end up with too many virtues, heroes get too many flaws. Random chance swoops in to ruin morals. Most importantly: the dead stay dead.)  
  
They are the type of story that appeals to those black-and-white thinkers who divvy the world up accordingly. Never listen to those people: real life is not a fairytale. Don’t trust those who see the world in shades of grey either. You’ll find yourself in arguments over which option is a hint darker and squinting sideways at everyone you meet.    
  
Here is the correct answer: the world is in colour. Literally and metaphorically. ROY G BIV, 24/7, 365 days a year. If you can’t see it, consult your friendly neighbourhood optometrist.  
  
(Who would trade real life for a fairytale? Trade colour for a easy-to-use morality scale?)  
  
(Who would want life to be that _dull_?)  
  
Outside of fairytales, Princes are never the heroes.  
  
————  
  
Hypothetically,  
  
Question 1a: It’s _Election Night 2014_ , do you vote for the devil you know (because he is clever) or for the moron you don’t (even though he is kind)? Choose wisely, you have to live with your decision for the next four years.  
  
Question 1b: How does your answer to the above change if you know an alien invasion is imminent?  
  
(Dead choices are still choices. Tick tock, Stark. Choose and play.)  
  
————————  
  
Four days after Sokovia rains down from the sky, the limo of the President-elect parts the sea of media and protesters outside Avengers Tower to drive into the underground parking garage. There are quite a few already and more will show up every day for the next two weeks. Lex drums his fingers against the leather. It doesn’t take a genius to put the pieces together - even the mainstream media suspects something close enough to the truth. _The Avengers played with something they shouldn’t have_. Lex’s guess would be more specific than that though. Ultron suggests intelligence and arrogance and misapplied drive - there was only ever going to be one answer.  
  
Luthor isn’t here for Stark. He’s here on one final errand as a private businessman to meet with Ms. Potts and the rest of the SI board about a corporate partnership. Sokovian relief: marrying Stark Foundation logistics with LexCorp overseas construction. (Tony’s got rubble to move and a country to raise; anything to lessen that weight.) Luthor has conditions - ones they won’t like - but they can’t say no and Lex knows it. They need outside legitimacy to stabilize and an endorsement from the man who rebuilt Metropolis and will be guiding the country through the turbulent waters ahead will do wonders for both their reputation and Lex’s image.  
  
(His advisors tell him Stark Industries is toxic right now, to denounce The Avengers immediately. They have never dealt with a Luthor before and they are learning what scares people most about him. That he will bend the world to his whims and not the other way around.)  
  
“Mr. Luthor, if you could please - ” Virginia Potts says, attempting to block him from crossing the wreckage that is the upper floor penthouse to the landing pad.  
  
Mercy spins expertly into the CEO’s way, allowing Lex’s perusal of the destruction to continue unabated. He picks his way through the debris. “Ms. Potts, you’ve met Ms. Graves. LexCorp will be in her capable hands for the duration of my public service.”  
  
That’s when he realizes Potts was not simply protecting her company’s reputation because through the glass Lex can see Tony Stark standing outside on the private landing pad. Lex has never actually seen Stark out of his armour: be it a school uniform or a Tom Ford or the Iron Man suit. This version of Tony is in jeans and a T-shirt despite the cold twilight weather. His feet are bare and even in the near-dark Lex follows the slight smears of bloody footprints onto the helideck.    
  
“Contemplating the unkept masses?” Lex asks, joining him to look over the lit city.  
  
Stark doesn’t register surprise at Luthor’s appearance, doesn’t even turn. “Patricide, actually. You have to really hate your creator’s guts to want to kill him.”  
  
It skirts dangerously close to the things they don’t talk about. Lionel and faulty pacemakers. “That is not a particularly high bar to clear.”  
  
Tony grimaces and sips from the tumbler he’s holding but it seems to give him no pleasure. At some point in his life Tony stopped drinking like Anthony and started drinking like Howard; a testament to all that you can’t leave behind. “You don’t regret it at all, do you?”  
  
Lex has always known that Tony knew. Still, to speak it aloud is tantamount to near-betrayal.  
  
In a couple of weeks it’ll be treason.    
  
“Something ripped a city from the planet, I’d have thought you’d have bigger _alleged_ crimes to focus on these days.”  
  
Stark looks like he wants to say something but swallows it down instead. The evening wind ruffles his hair and Lex’s coattails. This is where they belong. _Above_. Beyond the pedestrian humanity they’ve left below, reaching for the sky in the buildings they’ve erected as monuments to themselves. Avengers Tower is slightly taller than the Shard because Stark is petty but it stands nearly empty now, an impressive tombstone to an idea, so Lex gets the last laugh.  
  
“Did you get what you came for?”  
  
Lex would resent the implication if the tone carried a trace of power. “I always do.”  
  
Stark nods. Down below a dark mass of protesters is blocking another car from leaving the garage. “Don’t do that,” Stark mutters under his breath. “Just let them leave.”  
  
Iron Man could disperse the crowd in an instant but instead Stark pleads with them from the 68th floor. It’s probably safer this way. If there is a lesson to be found in Ultron it’s that the armour exists not just to protect the man inside but to protect the world from him. Lex wonders if the public knows how close it is coming to clawing their way through Tony to what lies beneath, to Howard Stark’s last poisoned bullet. Children playing with nukes.  
  
Tony is the weaponized creation of a flawed genius. It is only fitting he’d beget the same.  
  
(Ultron would hate that designation. He raged against the invisible strings of Destiny. A bastard son of royal lineage left to die on the doorstep.)  
  
This close Lex can see the damage. For a man who both damned and saved the world last week Stark is unscratched save for the faint violet of bruises ringed high across his neck. A large palm, long fingers. Tony ignores them so Lex does too.  
  
(The Prince of St. Matthew’s was worth nothing in his own home. Lex wonders how Tony had ever fooled himself into believing he’d changed.)    
  
Stark takes another step towards the drop, stops to curl his toes over the edge and because Lex is not a coward he joins him. He looks over the ledge into the emptiness and he can _feel_ the void. He knows it’s calling to Tony too: _l’appel du vide_. The lure of oblivion. The cackling rush.  
  
(The difference is this: Iron Man would catch Tony. If Lex steps over, Lex is _gone_.)  
  
“You owe me, Anthony,” Lex whispers into the night.    
  
“No, I don’t.” Stark turns to him for the first time and his eyes are feverish black holes, swallowing his irises whole. “You’re not helping Sokovia for free and you’re not helping me at all.”  
  
That Stark is granted clarity when it comes to Lex’s motivations and no one else’s is one of the cruellest twists of the universe. Stark takes another swallow of his drink like the scotch is medicinal instead of an indulgence and Lex knocks it out of his grip and over the edge. This far up they can’t hear it when it shatters but the black swirling mass below parts, scrambles, reforms. Unaware they’re not under attack from anything more dangerous than Luthor’s whim.  
  
Tony frowns. “Christ, Luthor, that could have hit someone.”  
  
It was also probably a waste of some pretty good alcohol. Lex doesn’t care. If anyone asks he’ll stall and the public will blame Stark. Lex has worked hard to maintain his reputation and Tony has spent a lifetime shooting his to pieces. Tony won’t defend himself; not for a sin this small, not with Sokovia on record.     
  
Stark’s leaning recklessly out over the edge and it would only take the slightest of breezes to push him over. With Stark’s drinking and guilt, with no one else to bear witness…  
  
(Luthor will regret it later, that this remains a thought exercise and not action. At the time what stays his hand is difficult to explain. It isn’t chivalry, or respect. Nor does he hold Stark to a higher standard than drunkenly falling off his own building. He’ll chalk it up to a whim - letting the dark horse remain in the running, lame as he is.)  
  
(In reality it’s the purpled hand around Stark’s throat. The utter revulsion at the thought of having to touch Tony in order to push him. Of Lex’s handprint joining the one already imprinted there and all the ones buried below.)  
  
“What’s a few more deaths anyway?” he says. “If your conscience has made it this far Stark, I can’t imagine it can’t take a handful more.”  
  
_Before_ Anthony would have joked, eyes glazed with drink and indifference. Now Luthor expects him to recoil. To be offended. As if Lex can’t count and isn’t keeping score for them both.  
  
Instead Stark’s eyes lock onto the skyline. “Do you ever wonder what would happen if I started playing the game we were raised to play?”  
  
There’s no need to specify which game. It’s only contest that matters: Risk with the actual world. “Are you not?”  
  
“No.” A dark laugh escapes Stark and on the other side of the world Novograd is a smoking crater. “I wasn’t even trying.”  
  
He smiles at Lex, and Tony’s teeth were always made for blood. His own or someone else’s, he’s never been picky. He leans in to whisper, “Do you ever wonder how badly you’d lose?”  
  
(If you’re close enough to push him Luthor, he’s close enough to take you with him.)     
  
(This is who they were raised to be. Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.)  
  
Lex steps back from the edge.  
  
—————  
  
Stark leaves Avengers Compound in an obnoxious orange car with a pat on the back and a nation on his conscience.  
  
Luthor is sworn into office on a cold morning in February, his right hand on the King James bible, sunlight glinting off his green kryptonite ring.  
  
You don’t need their first names anymore. You know who they are. You probably voted for, gossiped about, prayed to, cursed, bought, _consumed_ them in every way they wanted you to and several more they didn’t. Lionel and Howard are nothing but footnotes now; their sons having surpassed them in every way they’d care to measure.  
  
This is not Gotham’s justice but it has a certain flavour all the same.  
  
—————

Superman doesn’t wear a mask. He looks, to a casual observer, human. A man; no more, no less. (But alien still; perfect, handsome, immutable.) He hasn’t yet been photographed despite standing orders to every intelligence agency Lex can get his considerable influence around but people all over the world have seen his uncovered face. He does not deign to hide it and people assume it’s because he has nothing to hide. Who, with the power he has, would choose to live as one of them? Would strip everything spectacular about themselves to shuffle in and out of the drudgery of life? To be a god among men instead of a God above them?

In another universe it’s the perfect disguise because Lex would never contemplate the alternative. He would never choose to live below his station and cannot imagine anyone who would. But in this universe, _Destiny_ , while fickle, does Lex a good turn.        
  
He finds out who Superman is because when Lex was 14 he ran as far away from his father as he could to Middle-of-Nowhere, Kansas, and met a boy named Clark Kent.  
  
(Lex will insist they were never friends, leaving Clark to mourn a friendship alone.)  
  
He doesn’t think much about Kent at all until Lois Lane lands in the Briefing Room of the Whitehouse asking a number of questions that skirt the line dividing ridiculous fantasy and honest truth. His Press Secretary (the third in nine months) doesn’t even know how audaciously he’s lying when he volleys back denials at breakneck speed. But Lane has brought Kent and Lex, entourage and Chief-of-Staff and all, pauses out of nothing more than recognition.  
  
“Kent.” Lex searches for a name he never thought he’d need again. “Clark Kent.”  
  
“Mr. President,” Kent acknowledges, adverting his eyes.  
  
“What are you doing here?”  
  
“I’m with her.” Kent nods towards Lane who steps up again, determined not to let Lex sideline her.  
  
“Do you deny - “  
  
“Yes.”  
  
She drops her recorder to her side, though Lex notices keenly that she does not turn it off. “With all due respect, Mr. President, you don’t even know what you’re denying.”  
  
Lex checks his watch, “I suppose I have time to do them one by one if you like.”  
  
Her eyes narrow. “There are rumours the Russians are installing long-range missiles in Latveria.”  
  
“Those are the rumours.” (Doom is certainly installing something and if Dr. Richards & Co. don’t come back from wherever soon, Lex is going to form his own inter-dimensional taskforce and _drag them back_.)  
  
“Witnesses claim that during the attack on Midway City a number of incarcerated enhanced prisoners were present under the direction of government officials.”  
  
“This would be the same magical attack where thousands of people reported vivid hallucinations.” (The whole idea behind a suicide squad is that you can kill them on scene for deniability. Waller’s going soft in her old age.)  
  
Undeterred, Lane continues. “Buried in LexCorp’s financial statements is a contract for the disposal of one of the alien ships from the Battle of Metropolis.”  
  
“I am no longer the CEO of LexCorp as you well know - “  
  
“Capekillers.” Kent interrupts and Lex’s gaze swings up. He is not used to being interrupted and with his position it’s rarer still. “Military with the sole purview of apprehending or eliminating superheroes.”  
  
“What about them?” Lex asks, utterly unembarrassed.  
  
Kent’s entire expression shuts down. Lane just looks shocked. “You admit they exist?”    
  
He speaks as if to a slow child. “Why wouldn’t I?”  
  
“Because he - I mean _they_ \- “ Kent bumbles.  
  
“Because Superman - and the Avengers - are the only reasons you even have a country to be in charge of Mr. President.” Lane states bluntly.  
  
“Ms. Lane, every human on this planet lives at the good grace of someone else. No one is exempt. It’s woven into human civilization. Even the untouchable pharaohs who declared themselves gods were assassinated with startling regularity.” Eight months ago Lex nearly pushed one off a ledge. “In that vein, I’m doing nothing more than giving Superman a taste of what it is to be human. Vulnerable every day to the whims of others.”  
  
“You’re targeting him.“  
  
Lex raises an eyebrow. “Let’s not misstate the asymmetry here. He could fly into this room and wring my neck before I finish this sentence.”  
  
“He wouldn’t.” Kent says stoically and Lex tries to remember if they were ever close enough for Clark to care for his well-being. “He’s - “  
  
“Better than that?” Lex dares. “Better than us lowly humans? Maybe,” he concedes. “But I don’t believe humanity needs a caretaker - benevolent, or not. If Superman wants to stick around, he’ll have to play on the same field as the rest of us.”  
  
(There’s a tiny part of you that always roots for Lex. Admires him, even. A human man who challenges a god over and over and over, and loses and loses and loses. It’s because, deep down, we know we’re only human too.)      
  
“You just can’t stand the idea of someone out of your control,” Lane states boldly. Correctly, even.  
  
For the first time since Lex assumed office he feels the slick, icy feeling of _hate_ slide through him like tar. He glares at Lane and she must see what he’s spent years trying to bury: the snarling monster he’s inherited and keeps fed on xenophobia and spite. “Do you know what it’s like, Ms. Lane, to live under the absolute power of someone you cannot hope to influence?” For once Lane is silent. Blue eyes still locked on his but he can sense her struggle not to look away. “It was not a pleasant experience and I vowed never to do it again.”    
  
“Lex, please. We’re sorry.“ Kent’s voice is contrite. A hand tentatively reaches for Luthor’s shoulder before he remembers his place. The hand hovers, forgotten.    
  
(Lex has forgotten the secrets that came tumbling out of him at his first taste of freedom. Spilled into the ears of a 13 year-old farm boy he deemed too dumb and uncultured to tell anyone. Clark remembers, though. He remembers going home and hugging his Pa, realizing for the first time that not all fathers were created equal.)  
  
Lex straightens and slides his monster back behind green eyes. “Now if you’ll excuse me...”  
  
 Lane just nods, professional once more. The LexCorp scramblers will erase her digital recorder before she leaves the room.  
  
“Kent.” Lex reaches out to shake the reporter’s hand and feels, physically _feels_ , the man shirk back from his touch like his skin is corrosive. It’s overacting at its finest except Kent is far too polite for that, far too wholesome.  
  
(On the third finger of his right hand, Lex wears a ring set with a sickly green stone. The same colour Kent’s face is turning right now, grip slacking.)  
  
And then, in the space of a single breath, Lex _knows_.  
  
It’s a nearly fantastical coincidence but there’s no mistaking the kryptonite’s effects. Clark Kent doesn’t exist. The man-shaped figure shaking his hand is an alien: a sun god playing pretend, costumed in a human suit and wearing glasses with no lenses. Trying to convince everyone that he knows what it’s like to live without the powers that are his birthright.  
  
A stranger fallen to Earth with the power to judge and smite indiscriminately. An angel who did nothing when Lex ran away with bruises. The type his father always told him existed - the type who sided with Lionel.  
  
(It never occurs to Lex that gods could be children, too. That Clark didn’t know what to do, who to tell. Lex did the same thing to Tony; nursed his secrets out of loyalty and fright.)  
  
(Lex wonders what Jonathan Kent did that _Superman_ let him die.)  
  
There’s a flash of light as the Whitehouse photographer catches them off guard, mid-handshake.  
  
A God above men and a God among them.  
  
—————

No one in this story pulls a sword from a stone. They don’t pick up a magic hammer, or kneel at the feet of a Panther God. _Worth_ , to these men, isn’t to be judged by a weapon or a higher power. It isn’t judged by bank account numbers or national influence, or people you love (or any such nonsense).  
  
Lex would insist that the summation of one’s character is revealed in the quality of one’s enemies.  
  
Among Lex’s rogues he counts three Pulitzer Prize winning journalists; an insane repressed man in a bat suit; a sorcerer-king growing tired without his favourite plaything; an isolationist African leader trying to usurp American superiority; and above them all, Apollo in the flesh. An alien of near unimaginable power intruding on Luthor’s domain like he belongs.  
  
(Lex never counts Stark among them. Even later, when Luthor finally _believes_ , Iron Man never makes it onto the list.)  
  
Tony’s worst enemy is himself.  
  
_Tell me boy, what are you **worth**?_  
  
————  
  
They’re alone in Lex’s office. The oval one with the nice desk and the carpet with the seal. Tony is wearing a violet tie, Lex’s is green. Both having chosen to eschew the traditional red and blue for the colours of bruises, fresh and healing, respectively. _The Art of War_ has finally completed it’s ascension to the highest office in the land. It sits on Lex’s desk and he watches as Tony’s eyes skim over it without recognition and knows there are things even Iron Man has chosen to forget.  
  
“I make one crack about you running for office and now you’re President. I can’t help but feel responsible.”  
  
Lex watches Tony sprawl into the loveseat. Decorum was never his forte. “It was unfortunate that President Ellis chose to resign after your valiant rescue. I never would have had the opportunity to run otherwise.”  
  
“Well, none of my good deeds ever goes unpunished.”  
  
Lex chooses to take the sarcasm in good faith because it doesn’t matter anymore if Tony’s sincere. Iron Man is retired and Stark Industries’s CTO can’t touch him here. “Let’s give the American electorate a bit more credit.”  
  
“The _Legion of Doom_ or the _Serpent Society_. The agony of choice. God bless the two party system.”  
  
Lex smooths his tie despite the fact it doesn’t need it. “Well I’m sure it’s nothing advanced AIs, repulsor technology and Avengers merchandise imported from China can’t solve.”  
  
Stark has enough grace left to look slightly chagrined. Cognizant maybe, of the changes in their relative positions: his own tactical retreat from the public eye dovetailing with Luthor’s rallied ascension.  
  
“Why are you here, Stark?”  
  
Tony drops a ream of paper onto the coffee table. The SHRA. Stark’s quick. That legislation is still being leaked to key Congressmen in committee.  
  
Lex is nonplussed. “Sixty-two percent of the country agrees with me and the SHRA won’t affect you in the least. No one’s enamoured these days with the idea of private militias composed of superhumans, housed on American soil and accountable to no one - “ Tony takes a breath. “No, Stark. At best the Avengers are a diplomatic incident waiting to happen. At worst… “ Lex trails off deliberately.  
  
At worst they’re exactly what they appear to be. Captain Jingo leading a merry band of aliens, assassins and Nazi sympathizers across international borders while Daddy Warbucks takes a vacation from helping to complain to his childhood buddy in the Whitehouse.  
  
“I’m not worried about Registration, Luthor, the Avengers will comply with that. I found the follow-up.” He taps his watch and suddenly the room is illuminated with the pulsating blue light of holograms. Project Wideawake. “The Wideawake rider. Congratulations, this ever makes it to the floor it’ll eke out the Patriot Act as the most unconstitutional thing no one’s even bothered to hide.”  
  
Someone is getting _fired_. The reason Lex keeps most of his designs inside his own head is so things like this _don’t happen_.  
  
(That’s the drawback of becoming King. Acquiring power is easy, the trick lies in wielding it.)  
  
Tony’s waiting. He doesn’t look triumphant or righteous or angry. He looks at Luthor like he’s giving Lex the opportunity to fix this and Christ, hasn’t Stark being paying attention to who they’ve become? Tony knows who Lex is and what lies beneath. Why are they pretending?    
  
“Grab your coat,” Lex says instead.  
  
They head out into the Rose garden, away from any surveillance and monitoring. The only concession is a perimeter of secret service agents drifting in and out of his peripheral gaze. It’s early enough that the dew hasn’t burned off, sticks instead to their thousand dollar shoes as they leave footprints across the lawn.  
  
“Wideawake, “ Stark starts.  
  
_Wideawake_ is a series of legal procedures authorizing the use of force in the preventative capture of any superhuman at the discretion of US security services. Security services in this instance being legalese for _at Luthor’s discretion_.    
  
“It’s a last resort. It’ll never be used on those individuals who comply with the SHRA. If the Avengers are as open as you say they are then you and yours are safe.”  
  
Tony’s eyebrow quirks. “Who says I’m here on their behalf? We both know you’re after Superman and we both know he’s not going to comply.”  
  
“This is bigger than that.” If Lex thought that _small_ all he’d have to do is march into Smallville and ask Martha Kent for an invitation to dinner. If Luthor’s going to share this planet with superhumans he’s going to harness that power.  
  
“No, shit. It’s carte blanche to indefinitely imprison anyone you don’t agree with. C’mon, your paranoia can’t have gotten this bad, Luthor.”  
  
Lex has heard this all before. From advisors and opponents and lesser men. “It’s not paranoia when they’re actually out to get you.”  
  
“No, then it’s a massive hint that maybe _you’re the problem_.”    
  
Part of Lex chafes at the insulting familiarity and part of him chides himself for believing Tony Stark would have any compunction about speaking that way to the most powerful man in the world. “ _I’m_ the problem? Is that really the argument you want to make, Tony?”  
  
Stark falters. “They’re not your competition,” and he’s both smart and arrogant enough to omit himself from that statement, “all they want to do is help people. That helps you too. They’re heroes.”  
  
(Tony omits himself from that designation too.)  
  
Lex picks his way over to the flowers in bloom. “And why exactly would the world need those?”  
  
(Luthor is right, after a fashion. It doesn’t. Not on an individual scale anyway. It needs teachers, doctors, engineers, councillors, chefs, farmers, fishermen… Paramilitary groups are much further down on the list than pop culture would have you believe.)  
  
“Because we mucked it up.” Stark runs a hand through his hair. “So. Stop this. It’s not too late. Let Superman and all the rest... Stop playing the villain, it's not who you want to be. If I can - ”    
  
“Tony, Tony…” Lex shakes his head before going in for the kill. “ _I’m_ the hero. _I_ was elected to power. _I’m_ the one guarding the planet against extra-terrestrial threat. I united the country, raised it up and pointed it in the right direction. You used to get drunk and design air-to-air missiles and you do not possess the type of brain that will let you stop. You’re the man who promised the world peace and then nearly ended it.”  
  
Lex neatly clips a white rose from the bush. He carefully tucks the white rose boutonniere into Stark’s lapel. (It’s a mockery; _innocent_ hasn’t been in either of their repertoires for going on four decades. They became their own dragons long ago.)

“ _You’re_ the villain,” Lex says gently, softly, like it’s God’s awful truth, “you always were.”    
  
This is not a conversation for the Rose Garden. There’s too much sunlight, too much colour. Tony’s eyes are hidden behind dark sunglasses and Lex can only see his own distorted face reflected back.  
  
Lex steps back. “I hope I haven’t lost your vote, Mr. Stark.”  
  
There’s a split second when Stark says nothing and Lex can almost taste capitulation. This battle shouldn’t matter. There are more powerful men than Tony Stark. There are cleverer, there are prouder, there are better. (There is a King in Wakanda, a tyrant in Latveria, a god in Metropolis). It shouldn’t matter except Anthony could have been something to him, _once upon a time_.  
  
Then the silent moment passes.  
  
“Oh Mr. President, you had nothing to lose.”

\------------------------

  
Stark comes out for the UN Accords instead and for an instant Lex thinks he’s going to be foiled by _international cooperation_ which is an embarrassment for everyone involved. He can’t have the US ambassador refuse support for the document and shortly thereafter has to appoint a new one when the old one gets blown up.  
  
(Lex has a moment of elation when he realizes that at least the blast caught T’chaka and Doom.)  
  
(He doesn’t know that Victor is a step ahead in this too.)  
  
It’s a good thing for Lex that Steve Rogers never got around to reading _The Art of War_. Stark may go for charm but Rogers jumps straight to punching and all Lex has to do is wait for - _oh dear, that was quick_.  
  
The Avengers run themselves into the ground at the whim of a man with an eye on short-sighted vengeance and Lex can concentrate on bigger things.  
  
——————  
  
Daily intelligence briefings have taken on a new meaning in the Luthor Administration: every morning representatives of various domestic intelligence agencies gather in the West Wing and Lex fills _them_ in about the last 24 hours.  
  
“There are still no sightings of the Avengers we were holding at Security Facility 302,” General Lane says. “We’re still trying to figure out how anyone gained access.”  
  
Ross tosses down his pen to fix his stare on Amanda Waller. “Are we sure they’re actually missing and she hasn’t just jailbroken them to form another criminal superteam without telling us?”  
  
Waller remains as poised and silent as a Sphinx.  
  
Lane grunts. “What makes you think she’d tell us this time? But all our midsize Midwestern cities are present and accounted for so I’m guessing she wasn’t involved.”  
  
“I’m less concerned about her pet projects than I am with what happens when word gets out about the Raft.”  
  
Waller just coolly raises an eyebrow. “Then you’re underestimating the cynicism of the American public. They know Belle Reve and Arkham are glorified day spas for enhanced villains. They voiced outrage over Guatanamo but it’s still there.”  
  
Lane isn’t nearly as blase. “No one at housed at Gitmo was blond-haired, blue-eyed with an American-sounding name.”  
  
“No one housed at the Raft was either,” Waller says deliberately. “Officially, the Avengers were never in American custody. Give the media a tour of the facility if you’d like. It is, as General Lane has so helpfully pointed out - empty.”  
  
Max Lord tosses what he has into the ring. “We do know they at least touched down in Wakanda, though surveillance ends at their borders which means if I’m going to find them I need more - ”  
  
_Tut, tut, tut._ The room hushes at the sound.  
  
“Oh no, that won’t do at all.” Lex is standing facing the window, fingers laced behind his back.  “You see ladies and gentlemen, the wonderful thing about fugitives and WMDs is that provided they remain missing, they can theoretically be hiding in whichever country you like. Let’s keep our options open for now.” He smiles and the room is smart enough to not smile with him. “I’m a tad more interested in how they escaped a facility designed specifically _not to let them escape_.”  
  
“Could be the new King of Wakanda cementing power, setting up his side if he doesn’t think he has enough allies at home,” Lord hazards. “What about the new SHIELD or whatever the fuck they’re calling themselves these days?”  
  
Ross shakes his head. “They were in Malaysia.”  
  
“You sure?”  
  
“There are only so many places you can refuel a goddamn Helicarrier. Turns out their ‘new direction’ is to do the same clandestine bullshit all over again. Both Army Intelligence and the CIA have already started re-infiltrating. Trust me, SHIELD were as surprised as the rest of us.”  
  
Lane sneers. “Not as surprised as I was when I learned you let the premier mechanical engineer in the world take an unlicensed stroll around my top secret prison and then let him leave with his head still attached to his neck.”  
  
Lex can practically hear Ross and Lane bristling as they size each other up.  
  
“Stark has no reason to help them,” Ross bites out.  
  
“The international terrorist did tell you that, yes,” Lane barks back.  
  
Not that Zemo’s testimony hadn’t been enlightening. Siberia, the deaths of the Starks. _Lies, injustice and the American Way_. The only hard data they recovered were photographs from a bunker: a smashed suit, an orphaned shield, (a smashed skull, an orphaned boy). There was no other supporting evidence. Stark cleaned up most of his own mess by the time they got there at least.  
  
(The Russians must have copies too, but that’s a problem for another day.)  
  
Lex cleaned up the rest. The original photos are in his possession for future leverage, the copies were burned. He redacted the report and buried the lede. It’s the smart play but it still feels too close to pity or reciprocity or _weakness_ ; too close to protecting a man who cannot be bothered to protect himself.  
  
“Do you have reason to suspect Zemo’s statement?” Waller asks. She phrases it properly, addressed to him alone and not to these lesser men.  
  
Lex does not, but he knows Stark just well enough to know that a poisoned well has never stopped the man from drinking. The truth is Tony has always been drawn to his own ruination; be it alcohol or adrenaline or weapons or love - his ex-teammates will not be the exception. A reasonable man upon being betrayed would learn better but Tony has been taught this lesson enough times by so many father-figures/lovers/friends that even bleeding hearts in Kansas have lost sympathy.  
  
“As far as I know it’s accurate. We’re going to use that to our advantage.” Lex pauses as the next series of moves play out in his head. “In order for Wideawake to move forward the Accords must fail. Tell the Russians that Mr. Stark did not have the UN’s permission to enter their country,” to Lex’s left Grynch shifts, preparing a point, “he had _mine_. And the weight of this office is not to be taken lightly.”  
  
Lex turns to face the room for the first time. “The Sokovia Accords were an honourable attempt, but ultimately too weak to bind exceptional men. If the greatest patriotic symbol of our country ignores them, then ignoring them must be the righteous choice. And what are we if not a righteous nation?”  
  
Let it never be said that Lex is above populist rhetoric.  
  
They’re standing at the edge of a precipice. Protecting Stark is insolent protectionism,  groundwork for America’s eventual withdrawal from the Accords. It’ll also piss the Russians off and they might even storm away from the table first.  
  
“Once the Accords collapse from lack of cooperation from the signatory countries and the superhumans alike, well… we’ll try the good Captain’s way for awhile. Not a year since 2008 has gone by that _that_ hasn’t ended in tragedy. Then we have our own plan waiting in the wings.”  
  
“And after that?” Even Waller seems cowed.     
  
“ _After_ is something you don’t need to worry about yet.” Lex goes back to staring out the window at the garden. He can’t see the collection of worried expressions on the faces of the people behind him but no one dares speak. “Dismissed.”  
  
Outside, the roses are dying in their beds.


	4. The Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lex has never been saved, and so he has always saved himself. And as he has saved himself, he will save the world entire.

It’s tempting to try and see something of yourself in monsters. To ascribe them motivations, to humanize their fits of pain. Then you can fool yourself into believing that you have less to fear.

It’s not the monsters you should be afraid of anyway. Monsters are born the way they are, it’s the Monstrous who wake up everyday and _choose_.

\-------------------  
  
Six days after an incident in Siberia, a domineering politician sends a recovering alcoholic a pint of peppermint schnapps. It’s a double-edged gift bound up in layers of meaning. It means grief and _I know_ and it’s at once a temptation, a taunt and a threat. A poor substitute for a Bible and an echo of something pure. It’s remembrance, and condolence, and just enough rope for a man to hang himself.  
  
It’s the only comfort Lex is capable of giving.  
  
(It’s a complete waste, is what it is. Tony pours the cheap, shitty liquor down the drain. He hates the taste of peppermint schnapps. He doesn’t remember why.)  
  
——————————  
  
Sometimes the Alien floats high outside the bay windows of Luthor’s office and stares at him from above with red threatening eyes.

(Only The Alien now. Only an opponent, the enemy. Never Clark. Never again.)  
  
Lex never blinks first. Why should he? He has faced down monsters more powerful than this. He has killed them, reduced them to ash and spit on their graves. What challenge is a God after growing up a Luthor?  
  
That week in May when the Avengers splinter should have been enough to tip the world into his palm but the American people care for their own, so dead Nigerians are not enough. So dead Germans are not enough. It’s been seven years since Metropolis was razed by superhumans and people have already forgotten everything except a false idol in blue tights. They’ve forgotten the lesson about their precarious place in the universe. Lex’s country - his _world_ \- needs a jolt to restore it from apathy and if none presents itself, he will provide one: a war, an attack, a betrayal. _Collateral Damage_ is just polite euphemism for _things I can live with_ and Lex can live with a lot, so one crisp, cold day in November he looks out over the sparkling Metropolis he has remade in his own image and ponders the meaning of sacrifice.  
  
(If there is a single moment where Luthor steps over that final line, steps off the ledge and into the void, this is it. This is where we lose him forever, where _Destiny_ claims him.)  
  
He has never been saved and so he has always saved himself.  
  
And as he has saved himself, he will save the world entire.  
  
————————  
  
The Sokovia Accords are teetering at a tipping point. The UN won’t do anything as long as America and Russia are at each other’s throats. _Wideawake_ is waiting in the wings, moving consistently but so slowly through Congress that Lex seriously contemplates blowing up the Capitol and passing the bill as an emergency measure under Martial Law. He puts an alien overlord and a traumatized eight-year-old on a collision course and makes sure they don’t have a German airport in which to air their grievances. He could have chosen the Atlantean King, or the foreign Princess, but ever since Lex realized Bruce Wayne almost had him fooled he wants to see how he measures up. It is one thing to spend your life confronting nightmare after nightmare, and quite another to summon the courage to kill the light yourself.  
  
(The last small human part of Lex roots for him anyway. Gives up kryptonite and information - anything the Batman wants - just to give him a chance. Backing David against Goliath one last time.)  
  
Two unchecked vigilantes destroying a city may finally be a step too far. Subtlety is wasted on the public. He has Max Lord kidnap the alien’s adoptive mother to incentivize the proceedings and keeps Secretary Ross on hand to release their monster. As for the Avengers, the Accords give Luthor the last say on whether what’s left of them are granted access to Metropolis. He’ll stall his decision just long enough and blame the Accords later. In the best case scenario the Bat takes the Alien, the Monster takes the Bat, and it’s Luthor’s Capekillers who finally stop Doomsday in his tracks - but only after Metropolis has been destroyed for the second time. After his city is forced to reckon with a second judgement.  
  
(That will be their punishment for not heeding Luthor’s words the first time. For raising another above himself. He’ll never rebuild it, it’ll languish as a ruin, the cracked jewel of his Empire.)    
  
In the aftermath the abominable troll will be found to have kryptonian DNA - a sleeper threat from years before.  The collective anger in Metropolis and America at large fuels Luthor’s reforms. His power consolidates as the population cries out for retribution and blood. His extra-terrestrial preparedness plan is implemented immediately. The SHRA doesn’t go far enough and _Wideawake_ is brought in as its replacement since superheroes can’t be trusted and the Sokovia Accords are too bureaucratic. The current Avengers fall under Lex’s thumb, the rogue ones are declared enemies of the state and are added to Lord’s list. (After a nigh-indestructible alien, assassinating a human man dressed like a flag will seem facile.) Through guilt or death or public shame he gets rid of Wayne and Kent for free.  
  
The Golden Age of Luthor begins.  
  
(In all these fantasies Tony is still lurking in the background. Luthor never questions it. There needs to be someone who truly sees what he’s become. Someone who remembers who he could have been - back before he realized that if the world owed him nothing, then he owed it nothing back. Someone who could have cared.)  
  
Ask Luthor what comes next after America and he’d look to the rest of the world. Ask after that and he’d look to the stars. There is only a single other being in the universe who _hungers_ as Lex does and Galactus will not visit Earth for awhile yet. To try to fill the hole in oneself with love is pitiful, to try to fill it with conquest is _insane_.

It doesn’t go down that way.  
  
Perfect plans are only perfect on paper, when you birth them into reality they belong only to themselves. It is the irony of ironies that Lionel’s son never learns this. The truth is, Lex has always been in love with his own ascendancy, his own elegance. His complicated machinations and discreet whispers and Doomsday Machines. He is the premier student of history and the avatar of conquest. He trusts nothing but the frailty of human nature and his own base cunning. His opponent having a really big gun shouldn’t matter.  
  
But it does. (He should have heeded a child’s warning: _bigger, shinier weapons_ win.)  
  
His Monster doesn’t make it far. His city doesn’t fall. They tell him the Alien, the Bat and the Princess are united and gone. They tell him the Vision, War Machine and Iron Man are still 200 miles away in New York. They tell him _Thank God for heroes_ and Lex stops listening.  
  
(So this is what it feels like to lose.)  
  
———  
  
General Lane dumps the instrument of his downfall unceremoniously on the Kennedy Desk. It’s the gun pried from the charred wreckage of a self-destructed drone. It’s a streamlined weapon of singular purpose carrying no serial numbers in dull military grey. It fires explosive tracer rounds with armour-piercing casing that detonate inside the target, ripping pieces of kryptonite-tipped shrapnel through flesh like a million poisoned blades. It is a brilliant, horrific, downright nasty piece of work and even Lex is impressed by its lack of humanity.  
  
(There is elegance here too, in the utter annihilation. You just have to be of a certain persuasion to see it.)    
  
You don’t have to be the World’s Greatest Detective to figure out the solution to this particular game of Clue. There are only two men outside LexCorp who have ever gotten their hands on a sample of kryptonite. Bruce Wayne watched his parents gunned down in an alley. Batman doesn’t use guns. Doesn’t make them, doesn’t fire them. Can’t.  
  
Stark does. Stark has. Stark can.  
  
This is the weapon Lex asked him to build over pasta carbonara a lifetime ago, back when Luthor was so sure Iron Man was nothing more than a billionaire's vanity. And in a twisted way he has been vindicated. Iron Man doesn’t save Metropolis, Tony Stark does. Make no mistake, Stark's newest magic trick is fooling the world into believing he and Iron Man are one and the same. Into believing he is an action figure and not a weaponeer.  
  
Lex should have known better. He _does_ know better. That’s the salt in the wound; he was _right_. Tony hasn’t changed - not enough in the ways that men like Luthor would say matter. Anthony is the rightful heir to an empire of destruction and that legacy is much harder to discard than shrapnel. He still lives off too much curiosity mixed with too much fear all hidden behind a showman’s smile, but that creature that he’s tried so hard to drown in liquor is always there underneath, clawing to get out and fulfill his destiny.    
  
Monster to monster, Lex _understands_. They are of a kind, that way.  
  
(Would it bother you to know that this weapon had existed for years? That Tony shook Superman’s hand after the Battle of New York and fallen, fucked-up hypocrite that he is, invented a gun that could rip apart the Man of Steel anyway. All because of you, Luthor. You knew what buttons to push.)  
  
To Luthor, Stark always existed as a might-have-been, an easily anticipated player driven by ambitious if not moral compunctions. He has spent a lifetime watching Tony excel at necessary evils, but has never given a single thought to the idea that Stark would ever prove _better_ than him. (Not kinder, or more moral. _Better_.) Now he knows: this is what it is to have your favours thrown back in your face, to feel kizmet nipping at your heels, to utterly fail at the thing you are best at. They’re fairly universal lessons, Tony’s just paying them forward. Early Christmas gifts for the man who has everything.  
  
So there’s your answer Professor Plum: _The Merchant of Death_ , from 200 miles away, with a big fucking gun.  
  
————

Princes never go to war in fairytales because it's neither romantic nor righteous. It's vanity and revenge and greed.

If you want a story like that may I present you with all of history.

\--------

Lex returns to Metropolis for the funerals. It’s damage control. Spin. He publicly mourns the fallen and his speeches promise vengeance with the conviction of a fire-and-brimstone preacher. The skyscrapers of Metropolis loom at his back in silent reproach, like Isaac launching recriminations at Abraham on the way back from Mount Ida.

He sits in the front pew at the funeral of Mercy Graves - the Shard being the only building to fall under the Monster's assault. He's wearing a cream suit with a green tie and no one dares call him on his choice of attire. (Lex regrets Mercy's death, but only in the sense that sacrifice without reward is wasted.) Bruce Wayne sits two rows behind, boring a hole through Luthor’s head with his gaze but unable to finish the job himself. Perry White is in attendance for the _Planet_ , Ulrich’s here from the _Bugle_. Lane and Kent are missing. Luthor doesn’t see the black-haired woman standing in the back, unsure of her place in this house of worship but determined to take up a place in the world once again. It's only when the priest hits the line about _forgiveness_ and Lex rolls his eyes heavenward that he spots Stark on the balcony dressed like the devil in black-on-black-on-black.

They must make quite the renaissance painting in the old, crumbling church; a defiant man in white set against a sea of black mourners, while a demon sits high in judgement over them all and Lady Mercy lays dead on the dais.  
  
(Lex doesn’t fear judgement. There are no gods, only monsters. That’s the secret.)

Luthor walks out of the service halfway through. He’s the elected Leader of the Free World, they can’t stop him. He abandons his Secret Service detail to wander through the debris at the epicentre of destruction in his Power Suit; the verdant green of the kryptonite paint reflecting the late morning light. That’s when he spots the lone figure crouched over the rubble; the light ash from the wreckage staining the black of his suit as he plays with the dust. Lex recognizes him and steps out of his powered armour keeping his distance and his hands clean.    

“Anthony,” he greets, knowing Tony hates the reminder of who he really is.      

“Alexander,” Tony replies, because he knows it goes both ways. “You’re incredibly lucky Wayne has a sense of decorum that prohibits leaving funerals.” Neither Tony nor Lex do. They both snuck out of one years ago.    

“So you know Batman.”     

Stark wrinkles his nose. “Know is carrying it a bit far. I don’t think he approves of me.”    

“Because the rest of your friends do?”    

He smiles - a bitter, hollow thing. “Point taken.”    

Lex’s voice is mockingly gentle. “Am I really the only friend you have left?”    

For a solitary instant Stark’s smile turns rueful and his eyes crinkle around the edges because Tony laughs too often for the life he’s led. “We were never friends, Alexander.”    

“I’m aware.”    

(If you’re keeping track this is going much better than Tony’s other sudden revelations about friendship have gone.)    

“Why weren’t we?” It was a near miss back in that library.    

Lex finds himself giving an answer that’s mostly true. “Because you had nothing I needed and everything I thought I wanted,” _love, family, popularity, genius,_ Lex’s voice turns cold, “then I watched it destroy you. Repeatedly. I learned better but you - you never did. And I could never forgive you for that.”     

There’s silence for a long moment. The cathedral bell rings in the distance.

(This is where they were always headed. A man in white and a man in black atop mountains of their own destruction, bodies still buried below. No one escapes Destiny entirely.)

Finally, Stark speaks. “He never taught you to pull your punches, did he?”      

 _He_ can only mean one man and Lex’s eyes narrow. “What other lesson would you have had me learn?” Tony opens his mouth to say something snide and Lex cuts him off, “Don’t pretend you know better than me, Stark. I know you don’t. You may have tried to avenge your father to feed your own ego but don’t make out like it was driven by anything more.” 

Talking about Lionel always loosens his tongue and Lex only realizes what he’s given away when Stark’s expression locks. _Siberia_.

Stark swallows. “I didn’t do it for him.” Even with his poker face anguish shines out of brown eyes. “So you know what happened.”    

“Of course, I know.” It’s Saturday schoolboy parties on a larger scale: Tony’s friends only stay as long as the bribe outweighs his presence. Then they leave when the dragon comes knocking and Tony is left with the kid no one invited. “It was inevitable.“    

Tony shakes his head, freewill’s champion to the last. “It really wasn’t.”    

“You’re not blind enough to not see this pattern, Anthony. It’s _who you are_.”      

“Then I’ll change,” Tony says like it hasn’t always cost him dearly. “That’s what I do and that’s what you can’t, which means this,” Stark motions to the surrounding destruction, “is all on me. Because I knew what kind of man you were,” he laughs weakly, “I _remember_ being that kind of man and I just thought one day you’d…“ he trails off, fingers drumming against the exposed crossbeam. “It was a stupid hope because you won’t. You’re too good at what you do. Designed too well by someone who didn’t care about the damage you’d cause. You’re never going to get what I got.”  

“A lingering heart condition?” Lex sneers.    

“Essentially.”    

(This is the irony of their twinned lives, that they see each other as the cautionary tale.)      

Lex rocks back on his heels. “So this is an official Avengers warning.”    

“They don’t know I’m here.” Tony takes a deep breath like his preparing for confession. “Twenty-seven dead people and 90 million dollars of damage. Doomsday.” He shakes his head. “You don’t believe in superheroes, so believe in me. This is what I know happens next: you’re too clever to not have failsafes that will clear your name in this investigation and given what’s out there and coming for us,” Stark looks to the sky, “I can live with Devil-I-know in the Whitehouse.”

Lex smiles. He can’t help it. “Righteousness never suited you anyway.”

Stark ignores him. “You’ll hang Ross out to dry to save yourself and that’s fine by me. In return for keeping the identities of certain persons secret and Wideawake off the table, SI will let the DoD claim they took down Doomsday themselves and I won’t leak your memo ordering me into Russia, violating Russian sovereignty - thanks for that by the way.“ Lex’s lips twist, _No good deed goes unpunished_. “I’ll even keep your clandestine extra-judicial prison to myself.”

That’s actual leverage and Lex feels something stiff curdling in his gut. “You’ve certainly been keeping track. Anything else?”

“Your dalliance with patricide.”

Lex’s heart skips a beat. “You don’t have proof.”

Tony’s voice is tired. “I’ve had proof since I was 19 and the police came to SI with Lionel’s pacemaker. I’m a genius, remember? I found your interference and I buried it because you deserved - “ he bites off the rest.

Lex exhales slowly. Tony never said anything, never used it. Until today. “No one gets what they deserve.”

The air is so still. No birds have returned to the city. Not yet.

Stark sighs. “You agree and you get to keep playing President for at least another two years.”    

“Is that all? I keep secret identities secret, let you fall under the UN bureaucracy and you let me keep the Presidency.” Luthor’s cornered and they both know it - politics is all reputation and Stark has never cared enough about his own for Lex’s leverage to make a difference. He’s caught and it makes Lex angry; furious, even. Lex burns cold and always has. “Not very noble of you - selling your soul to a villain. Think of all the families of those twenty-seven people - think of the Graves. You’re giving up their chance at retribution for what? So Bruce Wayne can walk around in his grotesque caricature of you in public? So you can save Superman’s job in _print journalism_? They won’t thank you for it.”    

Tony shrugs like that won’t hurt. “They’re still at the funeral. We’re the assholes who left.”        

So Lex will keep his position but he won’t be able to bar the Avengers from operating within the US anymore, not without drawing comparisons to Metropolis. The Accords will be re-evaluated in light of the fallout; they’ll be reinforced as the standard. Ross will go down with his pet project and the removal of the errant Secretary of State will get Tony some bargaining power back with the UN. It paves the way for the return of the Ex-Avengers. It’s a pretty little powerplay all wrapped up in a nice neat bow and Lex would admire it if it were in the service of some higher goal, but this is Stark so it’s in the service of _nothing_. That’s what makes Lex truly angry: that all Tony’s talent and potential has been funnelled into nothing more than these little exercises in masochism he calls _love_ or _friendship_ or _debt_.   

(Tony isn’t his family, isn’t his friend, owes him nothing. But he was _almost_. If only Lex had been a bit less afraid of losing.)

“Alright, I agree. But you don’t really think this ends in _happily every after_ ,” Lex says spitefully, his teeth showing through his sneer. “You bring _them_ back and they’re going to eat you alive.” They will, and Stark can’t defend himself from the people he cares for; not nearly well enough. “And the worst part of it is you know this.” Lex finds himself gripping the dirty handrail too hard but he can’t stop. “You know every time.”    

Tony shakes his head in denial, like the future isn’t set and this isn’t just history repeating itself. As if Howard/Tiberius/Sunset/Stane/Rushman/Rogers are all outliers and not the pattern.    

Lex laughs and it’s a rare, melodious sound. “You can dress it up however you want Stark, this is you crawling back. You know the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting something to change.”  

Stark cocks his head to the side, all fight once more. “How’s it working out for you?”    

Lex walks directly up to Anthony, looks into the eyes of a boy who was once too much like him and is now his antithesis, and finds himself reaching into the black hole at his centre that replaced his heart long ago. “My father was right about this much: if you keep walking into closed fists you eventually deserve what you get.”

The words linger in the air.     

Then Stark’s lip curls. “Lionel would be so proud of you.”    

It’s unfair that after all this time those words hit Lex like a freight train. “And you’re still Howard’s failure.”    

(Lex’s tragedy is that he became everything his father ever wished for and still believes himself free. Tony’s tragedy is that he didn’t and knows he still can’t escape.)     

They glare at each other like the spoiled Princes they still pretend to be even if the skins don’t fit quite right anymore; wrinkled and scarred by the monsters within. Be glad they don’t put on their armoured suits and hash it out with violence. Be glad that the worst they can do is drag out each other’s mistakes and betray each other from behind conference room doors.     

They’re not friends and they never were.      

“So what happens now?” Lex asks.    

Stark draws in a breath. “Now we wait until aliens attack and prove us right. You can deal with Wayne alone until then. I’m done.”         

“Surrender?” Lex clicks his tongue in mock disdain. “Are you really giving up?”    

Tony smiles and Luthor can’t find a trace of regret in it. “Not on everything. Just on you.”    

It’s on the tip of Lex’s tongue to ask how many times Tony must have been on the other side of this conversation but in the vulnerable place between solitary moments Lex finally, _finally_ allows himself to believe. Maybe the masks-under-masks have to end somewhere. Maybe there’s nothing underneath this Tony - the greyscale fuck-up with no friends who’s carefully setting fire to the bridge between them anyway. Maybe the world did indeed break the mad, trapped kid he knew into something less glorious, something kinder.    

What a waste.    

Stark lets the breeze take the handful of dust from his hand. He slips his sunglasses over his nose and straightens, and reality shifts around him. Suddenly a different person is standing in front of Lex. Someone he doesn’t recognize but with Anthony Stark’s name and company and brilliant, whirling mind but carrying forty-nine years of surviving a war of attrition with his own demons.    

The hand he offers is scarred but open and Lex finds himself reaching for it automatically. They shake hands and he has to resist the urge to sink his nails into this stranger’s skin for high treason against their younger selves. For becoming someone else so long ago and leaving Lex behind. For losing, over and over again - to his own creations, to his hubris, to the people he trusts - and declaring himself a better man for it.

Lex would rather win than be the better man. Winning _makes_ him the better man.    

(If winning isn’t everything, then what does that leave Lex?)    

He lets go and his hand falls to his side. The world gets colder.    

“Don’t waste you life, Luthor,” the stranger calls out as he walks away to a life instead of a throne.    

And then it’s just Lex, standing silently, in the ruins of his conquered city.

——————    

Dragons exist, Dr. Strange will tell you so. Real princes do too. Neither appear in this story. It’s not a fairytale.    

And it’s only a tragedy if you think we could have saved them both.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I love writing unreliable, villainous narrators. My favourite Luthor is utterly unrepentant with a superiority complex and it makes him fun because he's so brilliant he doesn't see the obvious. The only person he feels true empathy for in this story is Tony, which is hilarious to me because most of the time not even Tony’s friends feel empathy for Tony.


End file.
